Red Wine & Mushroom Cottage Pie
Cottage Pie, not be to confused with its lamb counterpart, shepherds' pie (that's literally the only difference, the protein) was most likely a staple in your parents' or grandparents' dinner rotation.
We've taken the humble cottage pie and elevated it with Marble Score 3+ Black Onyx beef, shiraz and mushrooms. The intramuscular fat content in the beef renders down beautifully adding richness to the filling allowing the fat to exalt the accompanying flavours.
While we've used black onyx beef for this recipe, any high marble score grainfed beef or a wagyu cut will add these same amazing flavors.
Aside from some hands-off simmering this recipe is quick to prepare, easy and simple to make. By starting with some hard hitting flavours with lots of depth, we're simply reducing them down into a flavour base worth writing home about and intensifying the experience.
The Meat
Start off by dicing your beef into stewing pieces approximately 1cm x 1cm thick, a consistent cut will ensure your meat cooks evenly. We trim any hard fat and obvious sinew that's too thick to render, but leave all other fats on as they simply melt away into the gravy.
Dusting your beef pieces in flour before searing will slowly thicken your gravy during the cook.
While we have used bolar blade for this recipe you are able to use gravy beef (boneless osso bucco), chuck steak or rump.
Gravy
By building a traditional onion and carrot mixture as the base for your gravy, you're setting yourself up for success. The key to adding the red wine to this base, is to ensure that the mixture is brought to a boil and kept at a raging simmer for at least 1 minute. This cooks off the tangy, alcoholic flavours of the wine and leaves you with a rich flavour.
The Lid
Mashing potatoes is pretty straightforward, we've all done it a few hundred times. A little known trick is to start heating your water from cold, with the potatoes already in - This will bring the potatoes up to heat evenly with the water, stopping the outside of the potato cooking faster that the inside. This will help prevent uncooked lumps of potato through your mash or loosing yield to the cooking water.
Brushing your potato with a slight layer of butter will encourage the tips to crispen, teasing the potato with a fork allows more raised surfaces exposed to the heat to get those brown, crispy edges we know and love.
Now that the tips are out of the way - let's get to the recipe!