In my household of four, there is one shining star when it comes to cooking: Rory Kelly Denman, a second-year student at Fort Lewis College. When he’s gone, we starve.
We live in the Centennial Apartments with access to a full kitchen. Breakfasts often consist of eggs and bagels, with a typical dinner of Zia Taqueria or frozen pizza. This somehow doesn’t get old; however, our favorite meals are when our roommate steps up to the plate and creates something magical.
One such evening, Denman decided to chef up some shepherd’s pie as a fun and relatively easy dish, he said.
“I had this beautiful vision for what I was going to do,” Denman said. “If there’s one thing that college cooking is, it’s that the beautiful vision seldom pans out, but when it does; great!”
Rory Kelly Denman serving himself some shepherd's pie
Denman obtained lamb shanks from a free student farmer’s market put on by FLC in September. The lamb was sourced from Red Cliffs Ranch, a farm north of Durango.
His original intent was to use the shanks for the shepherd's pie, however there was not enough meat for the dish, Denman said. He opted to use the shanks to make broth for future use in a stew or soup.
Denman ended up using a beef ragu, meaning a sauce with tomato base. He had some ragu frozen from earlier in the year, and supplemented it with some new ground beef to add more flavor.
“So I ended up switching to the ragu,” Denman said. “It was an adventure; but I also think it made for a really good story. The highs and lows of college dorm cooking, you know?”
Next, Denman began searing some carrots and onions. He added tomato paste, salt and pepper, garlic and paprika for taste. Lastly, he added peas.
Denman cooked mashed potatoes, the second element of the dish, separately.
Denman skinned and boiled roughly four pounds of potatoes in a rice cooker, he said.
“You can cook anything in a rice cooker, dude,” Denman said.
Once the potatoes were boiled, Denman used a tool called a ricer to mash the potatoes.
“I haven't actually used one before, but I've seen people use them,” he said. “Apparently, the best mashed potatoes in the world get put through a ricer.”
The ricer mashes the potatoes into a fine texture that is easy to whip up into a creamy consistency, Denman said.
“Once the ragu was finished cooking, I got the potatoes out of the mixing bowl and spread it out like you'd ice a cake,” Denman said.
Finally, the potatoes were topped with shredded cheddar cheese and placed in the oven.
“I baked it for like five minutes, and then decided that I wasn't gonna get the burn I wanted, so I put it on a low broil setting, and that worked a lot better,” he said.
The finished product, one shepherd's pie
The baking process took about 15-20 minutes total, Denman said. The dish was ready to serve once the cheese turned to a crispy coating.
“Dude, you know, college has really taught me that I can cook on a dime,” he said. “For me, cooking has just been a slow accumulation of different skills and techniques that I picked up from my own experimentation and watching other people cook.”