Cottage Pie

Comfort food. Food that is so good at making us feel good it has an entire category unto itself. Regardless of where you come from there is something from your past, often your childhood, that evokes an actual feeling of pleasure just from thinking about it. In this country, I find that the things traditionally classified as comfort food also have a very real protective effect against the dark and damp of long winters. I’m not making a lot of cottage pie or bangers and mash in the middle of August but, during the winter, we go through potatoes like no one’s business.

When I moved here I had a difficult time adjusting to the winters. I grew up in the Midwest in America where it was so windy the snow came down sideways or so thickly you couldn’t see to the end of the block you were walking on. There was cold and snow but there was also sunshine. Winter in the UK is dark. For what feels like an endless amount of months and, to me, that was much worse than any weather I had grown up in.

So it makes sense to me that the foods we find comforting, especially here, are foods that not only warm us because they are hearty but also because they bring to mind a pleasant, snug kitchen on a wet, windy, pitch black evening. It’s no coincidence that pubs advertise their roaring fires as well as their fish and chips.

Cottage pie, along with its cousin sheperd’s pie, comes in a million versions as individual as the people who make them. This one has evolved over time based on what we have, what needs to be used up, how comforted we need to be. We don’t skimp on the luxury ingredients here which adds to the delight. Now, if anyone could find me some slippers that will actually keep my feet warm from October until May, we’re in business.