I am a big fan of potato, be it roasted, fried, boiled, mashed, you name it. This dish is one of our family’s favorite. But I usually make this dish only on weekends or on my days off since it takes quite some time to prepare everything.
The main difference of Indonesian style shepherd’s pie to the usual shepherd’s pie is the crust, where we use just mashed potato on the former and short pastry crust on the latter; the fillings is also usually not the creamy type, but there are of course many versions of this dish.
Here is our family’s version:
- 8-10 large sized potatoes, skinned, boiled and mashed with a bit of butter and salt. Divide the mash into two portions, one of them to be pressed into the base of oven-safe dish
- 4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and slice into 4 or 5 pieces per egg, then place evenly on top of the base layer of mashed potato
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 large carrot, cut in 1 x 1 cm cubes
- 20 grams of dehydrated black fungus, soaked in warm water and cut into strips once softened and expands
- 100 grams of green bean, thinly sliced
- 1 small pack of dried rice vermicelli, soaked in water until softened, cut with scissors into small pieces
- 350 grams minced chicken
- 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
- 1/3 teaspoon of coriander powder
- some salt, pepper and sugar
- dash of oil
- grated cheese or sliced cheddar cheese
Filling: heat up oil in a pan, add in garlic and toss until fragrant. Add in minced chicken, and stir until all cooked, toss in carrots, green beans and black fungus. Once the vegetables cooked, add in the rice vermicelli, then in the salt, pepper, sugar, ground nutmeg and ground coriander, stir well. Spread all the filling mixture on top of the layer of eggs and top again with the other half portion of mashed potato. Finish off by covering the top surface with grated cheese or even slices of cheddar. Bake in the oven at 200C for about 12 minutes or until the cheese is all melted and brown (if you are like us).
