[Sca-cooks] Re: Shepherd's Pie

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach tracey sawyer:
>Amazing -- you use minced (ground) beef for shepherd's pie!?!! 
>
>In Australia it has always been minced mutton (or lamb) left over 
>from roast lamb dinners.

For whatever reason, there seems to have been some equivocation 
between cottage and shepherd's pies.

>In our (admittedly short) history, as shepherds herd sheep - not 
>cows - and the mutton was available for them to cook and eat, 
>presumably at the cost of raising them, where they would have had to 
>pay cash money for beef, it has ALWAYS been sheep meat.

Geography will do that... we are primarily a beef country...

>
>Diced beef is "goulash"

Which I'm sure everybody from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire finds 
screamingly funny, too ;-)

>  and ground beef is Mince Meat (just to confuse the issue, mincemeat 
>(one word) in minced up dried fruit.

Formerly known as Collops, which is also kind of funny because once 
upon a time, a collop was a little cutlet-like entity...

>-- Isn't it interesting the variations on a theme you get, when you 
>cross national/international borders.

Sure is. And when countries are large ones, it's somehow even more 
interesting when you find regional variations within what otherwise 
appears to be the same culture.

On a totally unrelated note, and I do apologize for putting you on 
the spot, but you should probably trim your digests when responding 
(if that was you). I just removed about six pages of text; I think it 
makes it easier for others to deal with.

Adamantius