With the slow change of season that is summer to autumn, comes a need to create comforting dishes. Shepherd’s pie is one of my favourites for this time of the year, inevitably a result of my childhood experiences. There was nothing like coming home from school and having this for dinner after walking home in the cold. I have to say, currently is unseasonably warm at present so the alternative motivation for making this cottage pie (it has minced beef and not lamb) on Friday night was for my sister and her husband. My sister had just delivered twins at the beginning of last week, while we are pretty jubilant we are very much aware of the hard work ahead. The most useful thing that I could do was make food that they could freeze down and eat as ‘homemade ready meals’. When I finished work on Friday evening I stopped at Tesco (‘every little helps’) and bought a bag of potatoes and packet of mince. I do not have a specific recipe that I follow for these pies. I chopped up a whole onion and fried it with mushrooms, carrots and peas. I added some salt, pepper, cumin seeds, a couple of stock cubes and ground coriander. The potatoes were boiled with a pinch of salt and mashed with a small amount of butter. The final result, a very tasty pie.

I divided the pie into four and place three pieces in these small foil tins I happen to have in my cupboard. The fourth piece was eaten by Nacho, who is a big fan of my pies!

And so, there it is.