Cottage Pie with Liver and Creamy Vegetable Mash

Cottage Pie with Liver and Creamy Vegetable Mash

At least once a week, I like to get liver into something. Normally, that’s a recipe that contains some other minced meat and vegetables. This cottage pie is Finn’s second favourite meal (after eggs!) Chicken liver is easily accessible, but lamb’s liver or other liver also works very well. The key to reducing the liver flavour is soaking overnight in milk.

Liver is a nutritional powerhouse, especially for kids. A traditional food on dinner tables for years, it fell out of favour in recent decades. Cheap and nutrient dense, especially if you can source good quality liver farmed locally using traditional methods, it can be added to all sorts of dishes.

I’ll use the Weston A. Price Foundation’s description of the benefits of liver. You can read more here.

“So what makes liver so wonderful? Quite simply, it contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food. In summary, liver provides:

• An excellent source of high-quality protein

• Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A

• All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12

• One of our best sources of folate

• A highly usable form of iron

• Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium

• An unidentified anti-fatigue factor

• CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function

• A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA.”

Ingredients (makes one large whole cottage pie - serves 6 - and one medium cottage pie base - for freezing)

Preheat oven to 200c (180c fan)

For the base:

2 tablespoons lard or other oil (coconut oil, ghee or tallow) - recipe for home-rendered lard here.

400g liver

Raw milk (for soaking liver) - approximately 2 cups.

750g minced beef (grass-fed, ideally organic)

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

4 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped

4 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 cup frozen organic peas

2 cups fresh bone broth (beef or chicken - recipe here)

2 tablespoons mixed herbs

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 bay leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

For the mash:

2 celeriac, peeled and chopped

2 large or 4 small sweet potatoes

1/4 cup grass-fed butter

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

Place liver in a glass bowl with a lid. Cover liver with milk. Store in the refrigerator overnight (at least 8 hours).

Remove liver from the milk, rinse and remove any bits of sinew. Chop into large chunks then process into small chunks in a food processor (I do this quite finely so it blends with the minced beef). Set aside. Wash and dry the food processor thoroughly (you will need it for the mash).

Start steaming the sweet potato and celeriac.

Brown liver in 1/2 tablespoon of lard in a large saucepan. Set aside.

Brown minced beef in 1/2 tablespoon of lard in the same saucepan then set aside (you can combine it with the liver at this stage).

Melt the other tablespoon of lard in the same saucepan. Fry the onion on a medium heat until translucent. Add carrots and fry for 5-10 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add garlic and combine.

Pour in the bone broth and stir well.

Add the mixed herbs, cayenne and bay leaves. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes with the lid on.

Taste and season with salt and pepper.

Add peas and stir well.

Place into the base of a large casserole dish. I use this recipe for the base of one large and one medium cottage pie. I fill both then allow the medium casserole dish to cool before freezing it for next time (I use a an oven-proof glass Tupperware dish with a lid for this). This recipe makes enough of the mash for the large cottage pie. Next time, you’ll just need to make the mash to top it. Just halve the mash recipe or make it all and save the remainder for another meal.

Once the sweet potato and celeriac are soft, strain well and place into the food processor. Add the butter, nutritional yeast and olive oil. Process until smooth. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.

Cover the meat and vegetable mixture with the mash. Smooth then score with a fork, if you like. You can add a few extra spots of grass-fed butter before putting it into the oven.

Cook for 45 minutes, until the base is bubbling and the topping is just beginning to brown.

Serve with lots of well-buttered green veggies.