• Add a little olive oil to deep frying pan and cook mince on high heat until browned. Drain off extra fat or liquid.
• Add in onion and fry until transparent.
• Add in carrots and saute for a few minutes.
• Add in stock, tomato paste, handful of thyme, sauces, crumbled stock cube, salt and pepper, and bring to boil. Cover and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.
• Separately, add ¼ cup water to the flour and mix till smooth. Add to the frying pan and stir, bring to the boil so that the meat mix thickens.
• Add frozen peas. then reduce heat and simmer for another 10 minutes. Stir through parsley.
• Put mix into ovenproof dish. Either top with potato and proceed to bake (potato can leak into the meat mix) or cool meat mix in fridge for reheating and baking with potato later (see baking below).

Potato

• Boil potatoes in salted water until very tender. Drain well. Add back to saucepan on very low heat, allowing any remaining liquid to steam off for a minute. Then mash potato well. Add butter and mash through. Remove from heat. Add additional butter if required. Add milk and mash until very smooth. Add additional milk if required.
• Season to taste. If you like parmesan, you can sprinkle through and mix.

Baking

• While both meat and potato are hot, you can top meat with potato. Easiest to blob potato on, then smooth with fork, taking it the edges to seal the meat in. Brush potato with egg, and bake in oven at 180℃/356℉ for 45 minutes until golden brown and top is crispy. However the potato can weep into the meat mix if both mix and potato are hot.
• Or, prepare meat and potato in advance and refrigerate until cool. Then assemble and bake as above. Or cool the meat only, then top with warm potato and bake as above. Keep in mind usual food safety rules re reheating foods.