"Indian style" Cottage Pie

People often think our routine is rather odd, and it is because our work hours are odd. I mean I work a lot of random hours, mostly afternoons, evenings and weekends, and Rob works til 9 every week night. The result of this is that we don't usually sit down to eat dinner until about 10pm.

However, Tuesday nights are the most awkward night of the week for getting dinner sorted recently seeing as I've been at the local radio station - Shine FM - until 10pm then I'm running some of the teenagers home after that so I'm not home until 10.30/11pm really. Starting to cook at this time of night is just not good, so I've been trying to make things that morning or afternoon that Rob can heat up for us to eat by the time I get home. We had cottage pie a couple of weeks ago, and last week I left out some bolognese to defrost which just needed heating. This week I went back to the cottage pie but decided to give it an Indian twist seeing as we love Indian food. It turned out real nice, and I loved that this was a dish we had recently only very different too.

I had taken photos of this but this has really not been my week: not only could I not use my computer for a few days, my iphone also decided to quit on me needing to be restarted thus loosing my photos.... grrrrrr. So you'll have to take my word for it on how yummy this looks too.

"Indian Style" cottage pie

Serves 2-3

Ingredients
6 or 7 medium sized potatoes, peeled
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp butter

Oil
1 small onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated
500g minced beef
1 medium-hot red chili, deseeded and finely sliced
1 tsp tumeric
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp tomato puree
200ml chopped tomatoes/passata
Handful of fresh coriander leaves.

Recipe
1. Boil the potatoes for 20-25 minutes. In the meantime prepare the mince:
2. Heat a little oil in a pot. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and fry over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add the mince, chilli, tumeric, coriander and cumin. Stir occasionally and cook until the meat is browned.
4. Stir in the tomato puree, chopped tomatoes/passata and coriander leaves and cook for 3-4 minutes.
5. Pour the mince into an oven dish and set to the side.
6. Drain the potatoes and mash. Stir in the butter and milk to make them creamy, then spread over the mince in the oven dish.
7. Heat the oven to 180˚C and bake the pie in the oven for 25-30 mins until golden brown on top.


Also the lovely Rosie gave me a Red Rose today for Valentines

Thank Rosie!