T think the only difference between cottage pie and spa bol is one has potatoes on top and the other has pasta on the bottom?

[TwosaCrowd]

Unless I've been doing something massively wrong all these years? Both just onion, garlic, mince, p'raps mushrooms and maybe chopped or grated carrot.

You're making mash wrong if it's bland.

Baked beans and sweet potato?

Not round our way.

yeah but SW are trying to bulk it out to fill you up. you wouldn't make it with a rich gravy on SW

The thing is you're looking at slimming recipes. They reduce the amount of calorific stuff and bulk it out with tomato to make it lower calorie.

I might put a spoonful of tomato purée in a cottage pie but it's not normally a tomatoey dish. Plus bolognaise should have much more herbs.

Cottage pie has gravy and is brown. Spag bol has passata/tomatoes and is red. Herbs are different too. In fact, it is a totally different meal.

I put tomatoes in cottage pie. Hate it without.

My colleague often brings slimming world 'cakes' into work. They always contain 8 billion ingredients and processes and a muller light!
One of them is made of all bran (and a muller light probably)

No cottage pie has gravy/ carrots/ swede/ mushrooms

Muller light? In a cake? Or is that a joke?

mrsstar shit you not! Also slimming world cakes have no business calling themselves cake. It would be a sad day when all bran dampened with options hot chocolate and quark can call itself a cake.

I use a mix (roughly 50/50) of potatoes and sweet potatoes to top my shepherds pie. Delicious! I also put a tin of chopped tomatoes in, and a good few shakes of Lea & Perrins.

Gaggiagirl

and

Mine is exactly the same...I make double quantities and serve it with spaghetti one night, and topped with mashed potato the next.

I don't remotely care if it isn't authentic. I'm not running a restaurant, just trying to serve up meals my family will eat without spending too much money or time in the kitchen. I like my cottage pie (which incidentally I call Shepherd's pie even though I don't make it with lamb - I'm the cook, I can call it what I want in my own house) with tomatoes and passata and red wine in.

I'll put whatever I want into what I cook at home, and I'll call it whatever I like.
Cooking is all about adapting recipes to suit your tastes and what you have to hand.

But that's your version. Objectively speaking, the two things are very different. The OP and you, and some others, cook a generic mince dish and serve it in different ways. Fair enough, frankly. But cottage pie and spag bol are actually two completely different dishes.

Cottage pie - minced beef, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, beef stock, tomato purée, Hendersons relish. Mashed potato and cheese on top.

Bolognaise - mined beef, minced pork, pancetta, carrot, celery, onion, pasatta, red wine, beef stock.

They have a few ingredients in common but bolognaise takes about 4 times as long to cook.

Star - you add yogurt to all cakes at altitude to make them rise ( plain though not muller!)

Artandco

Now I'm wondering what adding yoghurt at altitude means?

Mrs ONut your bolognese recipe looks closest to the late great Italian domestic goddess Marcella Hazan's. YYY to all the veg, incl carrot and celery, plus pancetta, plus finely chopped chicken livers added at the end for extra richness. You don't need a lot of sauce, just enough to moisten your pasta with a little more on top. We English tend to make the mistake of putting far too much sauce on the pasta. (As well as having it as a main course )

Cook it however you like, but I'm at logic that goes:

Cheese on top of shepherd's pie - no, because cheese doesn't come from a lamb

But

Baked beans in shepherd's pie - yes, because presumably baked beans do somehow come from lamb?

Shld be PNut. Sorry.
Also I add a spoonful of curry paste to my cottage or shepherd's pies. That's just me, though.

I put tinned tomatoes in shepherds/cottage pie, and sometimes Lea and Perrins in bolognese. But I know it's not canonical and would never claim that it was.

My DF came to stay and I offered to cook him shepherd's pie, which he loves. When I made it clear that it would be made with lamb mince because that was what I happened to have in the fridge, he made a face and asked for something else. I love him dearly but I did make an affectionate snarky comment on the subject of what happens to people who reject meals because they're not made wrongly.

Extremely unreasonable.

If you don't differentiate properly then all your meals will be the same.

I'm almost vegetarian, and DH is, and DD hates mince, so sadly spag bol and cottage or shepherds pie don't feature at our house. I used to make gorgeous bolognaise though, and DH's shepherds pie (a la Marco Pierre White (knorr advert recipe) was to die for.

BUT I've cooked them with quorn and soya/tvp mince, and didn't like the results... Just so disappointing.

Has anyone got any good tips for making these recipes with quorn/ tvp or lentils?

Don't make lentil bolognaise. It's truly vile. The texture is All Wrong.

Siobhan - that's because it's my grandmother's recipe and she was Italian.