Shepherd's pie, in my Mum's way - ie authentic. When the roast (beef or lamb or mutton - remeber mutton?) has got down to a quantity that, minced, will half fill your pie dish, mince it, and toss in seasoned flour. Chop and brown a middling onion. Add the mince. Also add some gravy, made, in our house, with an Oxo cube. Add it a bit at a time, to give the right sort of texture - there should be runny stuff between the meat, thickened with the flour, but not too much. It should not be thick like a pudding. Put it in the pie dish.

Meanwhile, you need to have boiled enough potatoes that, when mashed, they will fill the top of the pie dish. Or more, if you want to save them for bubble and squeak, or frying for breakfast. They need to be a floury potato, not waxy. When cooked, break them up so there are no lumps, and mix in a good lump of butter. A bit of pepper would be good, too. (The cooking water should have been salted, so salt isn't necessary at this point. Add a little milk, and mix to a good texture - not too stiff and not too runny. Top the meat with it. Then use a fork to make a rough ridged pattern on top.

Bake for about half an hour - about 180 C, I think.

You can modify this any way you like. Use fresh mince instead of left over. Add assorted vegetables. Our school used baked beans, so the tomato sauce contributed the thickening. Marks and Spencer did a variation with mint in with a fresh lamb mince base, topped with a potato and fresh pea mash, which was scrumptious, and has been discontinued. It is a folk recipe, so the way you develop of doing it will be authentic. For you.

If you only have waxy potatoes, you slice them after cooking, and then arrange them on the meat like roof tiles or shingles. That is not shepherd's pie. That was what my Mum called cottage pie. She came from the Wealden part of East Sussex, and cooked after the manner of her mother.

In the Depression, she told me, her mother served up what she called "hasty pudding" - there are other versions of what follows. Boil water with some flour and sugar in a saucepan. This is improved by using milk, or not using it at all.

In our school, tapioca was frogspawn. We also had facecream pudding, which was cornflour pudding (aka custard), thick and lumpy, coloured a delicate underwear or face cream pink, and flavoured with.....something. Not horrendously unpleasant, but not something one would seek out from specialist shops in later life. We also had dry fly pie. A pastry case filled with currants, coconut and syrup, and topped with more pastry.

Penny