German Shoemaker's Pie (Schusterpastete)

The German name for this dish is "Schusterpastete." A "Schuster" is a shoemaker or cobbler, and "Pastete" means sort of a "pie;" that is, a dish covered with dough or some sort of crust, and this dish is more of a layered casserole, than a pie, as you'll see. The dish originated in East Prussia, a region, since World War Two, mainly part of Poland, but also with a part now belonging to Russia. The idea lying behind the dish, was that shoemakers often struggled financially, and they had to be very efficient in  the use of their limited resources, so this dish was a way to use leftover roast by combining it with ingredients that were not usually all that expensive. Of course, you can make the dish with fresh beef and uncooked potatoes by simply extending the cooking time, and perhaps by adding the top "crust" after the dish has baked for awhile. Sour cream was a VERY common component in East Prussian cooking, something the Germans likely picked up from the various Slavic people they encountered as they settled in parts of eastern Europe a few centuries ago, where sour cream was/is common, as dairy farming was one of the main professions. East Prussia also bordered on the Baltic Sea, which usually made fish, especially herring, plentiful, and cheap, something that is not much the case in this day and age.

There are variations to Schusterpastete, including those with fish only, or with some type of pork as the main meat component, but this is the version I know, and it can be a bit dry if you don't use just this side of a ton of butter (see recipe below), so I add a little beef broth. With East Prussians having ready access to dairy products, butter was used more to keep the dish moist, but with all that butter, and then sour cream too, you might hear your arteries clogging before you finish eating; that is, IF you finish eating. I don't always measure things when cooking; all that, "a quarter cup of this, and a half teaspoon of that," is not for me, so I'll try to give you some general guidelines, and you can adjust things to the amount you are preparing. I've made this dish many, many times over the years. This recipe is very much based upon one found in, "The Cuisines of Germany," by Horst Scharfenberg, Poseidon Press (Division of Simon & Schuster), New York, 1989, from original German edition of 1980.

About 2 lbs or so, leftover roast beef, cut into bite sized pieces
about 7 or 8 medium potatoes, boiled in their skins, but then cooled, peeled and cut into about 1/4" slices
a couple of tablespoons of butter, or more if you'd like (the recipe I first used many years ago called for like the equivalent of a stick of butter)
a good deal of fresh pepper
a large onion, chopped
several pieces of herring, chopped (pickled herring is usually readily available in markets, but I just made this dish again a few days ago, and I didn't have herring, but I did have a can of boneless, skinless sardines, and they worked just fine)
a little beef broth (I wouldn't add much, as you don't want the dish to be runny. Just a tablespoon or two, so it will help to "steam" the dish during baking, keeping it moist)
1 cup of sour cream (you can use "light")
breadcrumbs
a little seasoned salt (my own addition)
canola oil or vegetable oil to grease the baking dish (the recipe actually calls for ....BUTTER!)

Grease the baking dish, place potato slices to cover the bottom of the dish, add a little seasoned salt and pepper over the potatoes, add the beef, which should be cut into bite sized pieces, then cover the meat with more potato slices. Saute the onion in some of the butter (or oil) until slightly softened, mix the herring and onion together and layer the mixture on top of the potatoes. Cover the onion/fish mixture with the remaining potatoes, add a little seasoned salt and pepper. Now spread the sour cream on top, then add the breadcrumbs; this is the "crust" of the "Pastete" (Panko-style breadcrumbs will give you a good crunchy crust, but regular breadcrumbs are really traditional). Put some pieces of butter on top. Remember, the main ingredients are already cooked and just need to be heated through, so bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, until the "crust" is crispy.

WORD HISTORY:
Fresh-This word has a variety of meanings: "newly produced, newly found, not in preserved form, unspoiled, previously unknown," and a number of others, and while the meaning, "too forward, overly flirtatious, cheeky, impudent, sassy," is applied to a word with the same spelling, the word of that meaning was borrowed from German "frech," which also has those meanings.^ The ultimate origins of "fresh" are unknown, but Old Germanic had "friskaz," which meant "fresh," and this then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "fersc" (that's not a typo, the "e" sound came before the "r" sound back then, see other Germanic language forms below), and it had the meanings, "unsalted (thus modern "not preserved"), pure," but later the spelling became "fresch," before the modern version. The meaning was also later influenced by French "fres/freis" (modern "frais"), and the French form's meaning of "new, recent." The French form, and also the Italian form, "fresco," trace back to Latin, and Latin borrowed it from the same Old Germanic form. The other Germanic languages have: German "frisch," meaning "fresh," also, "crisply cool, chilly (of weather)," Low German Saxon "frisch," meaning "fresh," Dutch "vers," meaning "fresh" (notice the similarity to how English once spelled it's form, with the "e," then the "r"), West Frisian "farsk," meaning "fresh" (also with the vowel sound before the "r"), Danish "frisk," meaning "fresh"), Norwegian "fersk," also meaning "fresh" ("e" before "r"), Swedish "färsk," meaning "fresh" (another vowel before "r"), and Icelandic "ferskur," meaning "fresh" (and the vowel before "r").

^ English once had "frec," with the meaning "bold, daring," but it died out in favor of other words, like "bold" and "daring."