Feeding the Multitudes

Laurie Colwin's recipe for Shepherd's Pie from Home Cooking

1. Have ready four large steam-tray tables – these hold around forty
portions apiece, more or less.
2. Chop ten large onions and four entire bulbs of garlic, peeled, the
larger the better.
3. Heat two to three cups of olive oil in an enormous skillet or low-sided saucepan, and begin to brown some of the meat (you will need 35
pounds of chopped chuck in all), adding onions and garlic as you go.
The browned meat should then be put aside while you brown the rest.
4. Season with black pepper and the contents of one large bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
5. Apportion the meat into the steam-tray tables and add, or rather
distribute, ten pounds of previously frozen, now thawed, carrots
and peas, and mix well with the meat.
6. Make about one gallon of instant mashed potatoes, stirring with a
whisk. Many people find instant potatoes nasty – I do not. You
would not want them as a side dish, but on top of a shepherd’s
pie they are just fine.
7. Spoon a thick layer of potatoes over the meat, sprinkle with fresh
grated cheese (not the stuff in jars) and bake in the oven at 300
degrees F for two hours.
This will feed 150 people, some of whom are children.