I have now tried making this twice--the first time was for new vegetarian Ali and the filling was a mixture of standard shepherd's pie filling plus tempeh. I tried it again while in Philadelphia at Jocelyn & Nick's house and got a little nutty with the mixed veggie filling. The other big difference between the recipes is that Ali is doing the healthy eating thing right now so her potato topping was mashed with skim milk and olive oil...while the one I made for Jocelyn was full of cheese, butter and cream. Actually, I realized after the fact that I could have easily made a vegan shepherd's pie for Ali just by not using dairy. Well, if you are so inclined, keep that in mind.
I had a ton of help making this by the way. I think Ali might be learning to cook. The vegetables featured in her shepherd's pie were leeks, fennel, carrot, parsnip and onion.
We sauteed the diced veggies over medium heat in a little olive oil until softened and lightly browned, about 10-15 minutes.
Neighbor Matt helped too, keeping an eye on the meaty version of the shepherd's pie while I worked on the veggie one for Ali.
Like I said before, for the potato topping on the healthy pie, I just added a little skim milk for fluidity and a drizzle of olive oil along with salt and pepper. Then Ryan mashed them up.
When the veggies were soft and browned in the pan, I added in half a block of tempeh, cut into small cubes and continued to saute for another 3-5 minutes, along with some parsley.
I pushed the vegetables and tempeh to the side, turned the heat up and browned about 1 tablespoon tomato paste in the center of the pan for 1 minute or so. Then I added in about 1/4 cup of white wine and mixed until a nice sauce formed which I then blended with the vegetables. I also added a handful of green peas at this point, because I feel green peas are traditional with shepherd's pie. Then I packed everything into a little ramekin and topped with the mashed potatoes, to be baked at 350 for about 20 minutes.
By the way, this is the meaty version, in the middle of receiving the potato topping.
It turned out OK...I think I need to work on it still.
The vegetarian one worked really well though!
Like I said, I did something sort of similar while at Jocelyn's, but featured different vegetables, like shittake mushrooms and brussels sprouts.
This time I conscripted Jocelyn into helping me. Apparently I am getting very lazy about prep work.
I used rutabega, celery, carrot and onion for the harder root vegetables to be sauteed first.
Fennel went in at the same time as the chopped brussels sprouts.
Jocelyn adding cheese and cream to the mashed potatoes...
...while the veggie filling sautes nicely.
After all the vegetables were browned--add them beginning with the onions, then other hard vegetables (rutabega, carrot, etc), then in goes fennel and brussels sprouts, followed finally by the mushrooms--I added these false meat steak strips. I totally regretted it because I thought they smelled weird and fake and because the vegetable filling was bountiful enough on its own, but Jocelyn and Nick said it was tasty, so I guess it's OK. I probably would recommend omitting or using tempeh instead, personally. Then I cleared a space in the middle of the pan and made a quick bind for the vegetables, with 1 tablespoon flour browned in 1 tablespoon butter until pasty, then mixing in vegetable stock until a thick sauce formed. Mixed all together then spooned it all into a baking dish.
Potatoes on top...
...which you should sample because they are vehicles for cheese.
Bake for about 20 minutes at 350, until browned on top, then watch as it is devoured by hungry vegetarians.
Tofu! So polarizing. I love it deeply but I recognize there's times when it needs to up the texture factor. Here's how I make it a crispy delight--particularly suitable for dipping or adding to your favorite stirfry.
Maybe people would love it more if they realized that it's basically just cheese? Look at it! Like a giant square-shaped fresh mozzarella. Wetness is an enemy of crispy frying so the first thing to do is get the tofu as drained as you can. Cut it in half and lay it out in a paper-towel lined colander.
Put another layer of paper towels on the top surface of the tofu slices and weigh it down with something heavy, like big tomato cans or something. I used my Alterra coffee canister that Jocelyn gave me years ago as a going away present when I left Milwaukee. It does have a pound of coffee in it so it's good and heavy right now.
After at least 30 minutes, your tofu should be really well drained. But please note--even if you don't have time to drain the tofu or just didn't think of it or whatever, you can still squeeze the tofu and get some water out of it. It won't be totally dry but it's better than nothing. Cut the slices into cubes of whatever size you like. Smaller will be crispier. I went for medium size ones here.
Mix up equal parts four and nutritional yeast flakes with salt and pepper in a big bowl. This is 1/4 cup each. 
After the flour and nutritional yeast is blended, add in your tofu chunks.
Toss 'em around, get them good and covered.
Heat up a good 1/4 cup of canola oil in a huge pan. You want to get it really good and hot. Sizzly.
If your pan is big enough, you can do all the tofu at once. Otherwise just work in two batches. You don't want to crowd them or they'll just be soggy and greasy instead of crisp.
If you oil is hot enough, they'll sizzle when they hit it and start turning golden brown right away. Flip them over after a few minutes--take a look at the bottom of one or two first to see if they're the right color. You can see a couple of mine got a little bit too toasty--I think I left them on for about 4 minutes before flipping over.
Take them off and drain well on paper towels. That's the boo thing about frying--you end up using a lot of paper towels which always makes me feel wasteful. 
Check it out! Perfectly golden squares of crispy tofu. They'll be the crispiest right after they're cooked so don't let them sit around too long. 
Like I said, smaller pieces will brown up faster and be more crisp so you may want to experiment. One yummy thing to do is to use them to dip in peanut sauce, sort of like tofu satay. Or in any stir fry, which is what we did that night--in a spicy sauce with brown rice and snap peas.
