Usually, I agree with Nigella Lawson – “There is nothing worse than going out for Christmas lunch and finding someone’s done something interesting,” she wrote for Vogue in 1995.
The same should be true for some other rarefied foods too, I tell myself. Brownies, roast dinners, cottage pies, and Yorkshire puddings... why mess with perfection?
Still, if there’s one woman I might just trust to prove me wrong, it’s Mary Berry.
That’s a good policy, seeing as the former Great British Bake-Off host loves to chuck wildcard ingredients into everything from her spag bol to her lasagne.
Her cottage pie is no exception ― the Cordon Bleu-trained chef prefers not to use mash on its top, it seems.
So what does she use instead?
Mary Berry’s cottage pie recipe features a golden crown of potato dauphinoise instead of mashed potato.
BBC Food says this “elevates the cottage pie recipe to new luxury levels,” adding that “It’s so much smarter than the usual cottage pie and is perfect for casual supper parties too.”
While I, a potato purist, am usually against such spud sins, I actually think this approach has a few practical (as well as taste-based) advantages.
For one thing, Mary slices her potatoes thinly before boiling them.
That means you get a fancier finish for less active cooking ― they only need four minutes to boil, and don’t require bicep-numbing mashing.
It’ll also shrink your washing-up pile. You don’t need to boil spuds, strain them, put them back into the pot, mash in some milk/butter/cream, and scoop the stuff out onto the top of the mince ― inevitably leaving a starchy mess everywhere.
Instead, you simply drain the potatoes and chuck ’em on, adding cream and cheese afterwards.
Any other tips?
Mary stresses that the potatoes should be perfectly par-boiled.
“Make sure the potatoes are just cooked,” she says; but if they’re too hard, they won’t absorb the cream.
The ideal boiling time is about four to five minutes, she says.
“Make sure you cook the dish fairly quickly when the potato topping is added or the potatoes may discolour and the cream will sink into the meat,” she added ― though the beef mix can be made as far as two days in advance.
That means you could get your base cooked on Wednesday, and spend only four minutes boiling spuds on a Friday before adding cream and cheese and baking the lot for a dinner party-worthy meal that looks way fancier than it is.
Fine, fine, not all my favourite childhood meals are untouchable...