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This week I went back to a familiar place in London and saw something a bit new to me.

Familiar because I used to work in Westminster and would see this view every day. New because I went to St James’s Park for the first time.

St James’s Park, located in central London, is the oldest of the capital’s eight Royal Parks, having once been a marshy water meadow and a site for a leper hospital in the 13th century.

But enough of that history. I was heading for the Fields of War exhibition open here to the public until Armistice Day on 11th November. It’s an outdoor photo gallery consisting of 60 powerful images of the First World War battlefields as they appear today. The photographer behind it all is Michael St Maur Sheil, who has remarkably spent the past seven years capturing the landscapes to bring them to our streets.

The exhibition is in fact part of an international project taking place between 2014 to 2018, its duration of course representing the length of the conflict. It is currently touring cities across the UK. More info here.

The image below stood out in my mind the most. It’s one of many that shows how the landscape of our world is permanently scarred and altered by war.

By way of introduction to his work, the photographer said ‘A hundred years later, all living memory has passed: the war is now history and only the landscape remains to bear witness to those tumultuous events’.

He sums up in a sentence why I started this blog. The responsibility now falls to this generation to preserve the memory and legacy of those before us. It would be a tragedy almost as big as the war itself if we forgot all that was fought for and the hardships suffered both abroad and at home in doing so.

It inspired me to embrace this defining period in world history and pay my respects in my own individual way. Each week I aim to show all that London is doing to remember the war, as well as cooking up classic British meals using recipes from cook books written at the time.

I hope you enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoy producing them. And I hope you visit again next week for a special post as it will be my 10th.

But, for now, this week’s trip prompted me to make a family favourite that has been part of the landscape of British home cooking for a century…

Bella’s Shepherd’s Pie

In my war time cook book I’ve stumbled across many strange things that we wouldn’t consider eating today, such as pig’s trotters. It would have been popular in the day because, at a time when there wasn’t enough meat to go around or it was becoming increasingly expensive, you’d use up almost anything on the animal.

But I have also come across many dishes that are still loved and eaten regularly today. I found a shepherd’s pie recipe, proving that this particular dish has been a treasure in the average British kitchen for over 100 years.

Once again I got some help from Sorted Food – video here.

Here’s what I did…

INGREDIENTS

About 500g minced meat (lamb is traditional but here I used beef)
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 sticks of celery
2 carrots
1 beef stock cube
Dried rosemary
Can of chopped tomatoes
Glass of red wine
Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce
5 potatoes mashed for topping

1) After chopping the vegetables fry off the garlic first in some butter, then add the onions. When these all wilt down add the carrots and celery.

2) I seasoned the mince well in its packaging with salt and pepper and broke it up to fit into the pan with the vegetables. Stir until meat browned.

3) Crumble the Oxo cube in and stir well. Add some rosemary

4) Pour in tomatoes, glass of red and Worcestershire sauce.

5) Cover with lid and leave to simmer on a low heat for an hour. The longer you leave it the richer it becomes.

I then prepared the mash and assembled the pie. Stirring butter into the mash made it a bit smoother but the fluffier it is the browner it goes in the oven. I crumbled some blue cheese over as in the Sorted video but it’s not to everyone’s taste so you could use whatever cheese you want on top.

I baked this at 200 degrees until it was nice and brown on top (about 20 mins).