Chef Joseph Cozza of Fado.

LINCOLN

When Joe Cozza was just a kid, his mother made Shepherd’s Pie in layers. First there was the meat; then a vegetable like corn, then potatoes.

But as executive chef at Fado Irish Pub at Twin River, Cozza’s Shepherd’s Pie is more like a stew, incorporating lots of onions, celery, carrots and leeks with the ground beef.

“It’s done the Irish way, with everything blended in,” he said standing in the dining room of the restaurant on New Year’s Day.

And a pleasing way it is according to a reader who e-mailed looking for the recipe last summer. One thing led to another and it is only now that chef and I got together so he could share his recipe. What better time for the dish though, with the cold days of January calling us to eat comfort food that will warm both soul and stomach. Shepherd’s Pie is one of those nostalgic dishes, with folks like Cozza remembering just how their mother made it.

Of course, the British are credited with making Shepherd’s Pie famous and with lamb no less but you can’t blame the Irish for making this dish its own.

Today it’s Cozza’s recipe that we share. One look at the ingredients and it did make me stop and take notice. His recipe for 4 to 6, depending on portion size, calls for two pounds of ground beef but also for 10 1/2 cups of sliced veggies. Once I tasted the Shepherd’s Pie, I understood the proportions were satisfying and not out of whack as I initially thought.

The onions, celery, carrots and leeks, do indeed shrink down when blanched. They further reduce while simmering with the meat for 20 minutes. The result is a blend that brings together all the meat and vegetables in a most agreeable way.

As for the seasoning, at Fado, Cozza uses a demi glace but that will get expensive for home cooks since they need four cups of it for his recipe. (If you don’t make your own, and few of us do, that can cost you upward of $90 at a specialty store like Williams-Sonoma). That’s why he substitutes any brown gravy of a cook’s choosing for both economy and ease. He also adds a beef base for more flavoring. Home cooks can find Better Than Bouillon in the soup aisle of grocery stores.

For the restaurant dishes, he actually adds a third seasoning blend but its one not available to home cooks and most won’t miss it.

For the final touch, Cozza pipes mashed potatoes over a single serving and browns it in the broiler.

Home cooks can make their favorite mashed potatoes and they don’t have to get fancy with piping but just add a layer to the top.

Cozza, a graduate of Johnson & Wales, has been at Twin River for two years now having started with the now defunct Carmine’s (a good restaurant but too big for the site, he said) and then moving to Fado. Before coming to Lincoln he was chef at Aldente Restaurant at Foxwoods in Connecticut where he still makes his home with his wife, Melissa, and three children.

Fado, pronounced “fah-DOUGH,” meaning long, long ago, has as a centerpiece a gargantuan octagonal bar brought over from Ireland. Learn more at fadoirishpub.com.

gciampa@projo.com