hey guys curtis stone here i've got a recipe for you it's really quite sentimental to me my granny used to make this one for me and my brother when we were little kids and i can still remember how it would taste it's my granny's cottage pie very simple to make i'm gonna get started because once i cook this for you you're going to be amazed the first job you've got with a cottage pie is to make the mesh so over here I've got some potatoes I've cut them into like two or three centimeter pieces and I'm going to pop them into a pan and then cover them with cold water alright so we'll put that up to a nice high heat with just a little bit of salt now you'll see I've put the water about two and a half centimeters above the potato so again not you don't have to fill the pot all the way to the top once that water starts to simmer I'm going to reduce the heat and cook with the lid slightly tilted for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender while they're cooking I'm going to get started on the beef filling now I'm using three star coals means that's got a little bit of a fattier content which I love especially for this dish because what we're going to do if you know sizzle that's what you want to hear another temptation of course when you put mince meat into a hot pan is the first assist I actually leave it because I lit a little bit of that caramelization start to happen on the bottom of the pan before I start to stir it so let it caramelize a little get some of that beautiful browning going on and then turn your beef over and you'll see you're getting a really beautiful fond on the bottom of that pan and that caramelization there is going to give you beautiful sweetness the next step is to remove the beef from the pan leaving a little bit of that beef fat in the pan because that's what we're going to fry our vegetables in so I'm just going to go ahead scoop this up then I go ahead and get my onions leaving that little bit of fat in the pan and again just slowly developing that flavor in the pan with those frying onions the room should be filling with beautiful fried onion smell then what you're doing is you get your carrot well as a little bit of celery and we give that a couple of minutes and of course it's an absolute essential we all know it in most issues with garlic finely crushed now if you have a look at my potatoes you'll see they're just coming up to the ball so what I'm going to do is just tilt the pan ever so slightly to allow a little bit more steam out and just reduce the heat next I take a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste add that we're going to roast that out for just a minute before we add a little flour now the flour is going to help bind it and make a really beautiful thick sauce and now for some beautiful stock I use about two cups of salt reduced beef stock so just to help that come up to the boil I'm going to pop the lid on that just you know always speed things up a little bit because you can you're just capturing that steam that's going to flow back onto the surface of the liquid which is going to bring it to the boil a little faster now potatoes are doing great you want to make sure that they're not overcooking so the best way to do that is just pull one out to the surface and just give it a little feel and if it's not soft then you need a little bit further to go so let's take a look oh yeah perfect see those little bubbles in the pants exactly what you're looking for your next step is to get that beef and go ahead and add it back in so we now just let that simmer away a little bit make sure you season it with a little bit of salt and a little bit of fresh ground black pepper it is beginning to smell just like walking into granny's kitchen right here it smells beautiful and guess what our potatoes let's take a look oh yeah as soon as they give way like that you pretty much know they're good right so what I do is I drain the water off the potatoes and then I take that strainer and pop it back over the hot pan because that's steam enos that warmth of the hot pan below is going to help to dry those potatoes out which will give you a really really creamy mash and just tip these potatoes into the back into my warm pan get the good old trusty masher and step down to town then I'm going to add a little bit of milk just continue to mash that up let me have a taste of this mmm fantastic so so rich and so delicious I'm just going to turn that off the heat once you're happy with your mash which I sure AM you have a quick taste of that as well yeah it doesn't need a little more salt back so the only thing left to do here is to get our potatoes on top of our cottage pie so to do that I'm just going to go ahead and push that vegetable a little down the side smooth it out and then directly in this pan I'm just going to pick up some of my potato and you see how I'm putting the potato on just in little pieces but I make sure that I get it all pretty much covered then you can go back in with your spatula and kind of smooth it out a little if you like and then actually what I like to do is get a smaller spatula or a spoon and sort of dig into a little bit so you get some some bits that are sort of sticking out that are a little crispy the last job I've got here is to brush it with just a little bit of butter and we're done once you've got that butter on top of the potatoes all you have to do is stick this under the grill and it's only going to take about 6 minutes it's going to turn golden slightly crispy and such so good ha ha the six minute is up have a look at that it's so easy to do I just can't help but I'm going to dig in can I get a little taste yeah nice and hot I hope you enjoy my granny's cottage pie as much as I do