Lamb Shepherd's Pie with Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Remember the Lamb Pizza with Arugula, Goat Cheese & Pepperoncini I wrote about? Well, after making the pizza, I still had a pound of raw ground lamb leftover, not to mention the goat cheese and pepperoncini.

Of course I could have simply made another pizza, or frozen the ground lamb, but I wanted to do something else.

I decided to make Lamb Shepherd's Pie with Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes.

I did not grow up eating shepherd's pies. Instead, we had a similar dish: mashed potatoes on the bottom, then a layer of ground beef, and another layer of mashed potatoes. This was baked in a large rectangular metal dish and served with pickles. Oh the warm childhood memories!

Shepherd's pie is usually made with meat, onions and carrots and topped with mashed potatoes. What's different in this recipe I came up with is 1) I used lamb 2) I added pepperoncini to the filling 3) instead of adding Cheddar to mashed potatoes, I added goat cheese. It all worked out great!

Lamb Shepherd's Pie with Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients
for the filling
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 white onion, chopped
4 carrots, peeled and cubed
5 thyme sprigs
1 pound ground lamb
salt & pepper
1 cup frozen peas, defrosted
1/3 cup pepperoncini

for the topping
3 large Russet potatoes, peeled, cubed, cooked in salted water till tender
5 ounces goat cheese
1/3 cup milk
salt & pepper

Directions
1. To make the filling, heat the oil in a large pot. Add onion, carrots and thyme and cook for about 8 minutes.
2. Add the lamb and saute till it's brown.
3. Remove the thyme sprigs, season with salt & pepper and add peas and pepproncini.
4. To make the topping, combine cooked and drained potatoes with goat cheese, milk, season with salt & pepper and mash.
5. Preheat the oven to 375.
6. Add the filling to the bottom of your baking pans. You can see I used quite the variety! {Thank you, mama for the little red casserole dish!!}

7. Top the filling with mashed potatoes. I piped mine using a large plastic bag and snipping off a little corner. I think it worked quite well.

8. Bake the shepherd's pies for 25 minutes, then put them under a broiler for 5-8 minutes till the potatoes turn a gorgeous golden brown color.

I was incredibly happy with how these turned out. The pepperoncini added something extra to an otherwise standard dish, and if you love goat cheese, you are going to love these mashed potatoes.

I'm sure these would freeze pretty well, but I ate the entire thing through the week :)

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!!!