Chicken Pot Pie

I’m not been cooking for nearly a week now, I feeling is bit not right when the kitchen is quiet. Beside there was a time after I cook a supper and had enjoyed it, I just realised the water supply had stopped. I can’t do my washing up, I nearly scream.

I think this is one of the comfort food that I can easily make it. As I always will keep some pastry in freezer, it come in very handy when you need something that.

For puff pastry (375 grams all-butter puff pastry sheet (23 x 40cm / 9½ x 9½ inch)

• 200g plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 230g cold unsalted butter, cut into 5mm slices
• 1 lemoon juice
• 5-6 tbsps of ice water

For the chicken filling

• 3 rashers streaky bacon (cut or scissored into 2.5cm / 1 inch strips)
• 1 tsp garlic infused olive oil
• 125 g chestnut mushrooms (sliced into 5mm pieces)
• 250 g chicken thigh fillets (cut into 2.5cm pieces)
• 25 g plain flour
• ½ tsp dried thyme
• 1 tbsp butter
• 300 ml hot chicken stock
• 1 tbsp Marsala

To make the puff pastry

1. Pulse the flour and salt together in the processor, then add the butter and pulse 3-4 times, the butter should be cut up but still be in visible chunks.
2. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and the iced water, and pulse till the pastry begins to form a ball, then tip out onto the bench and form a ball. Wrap tightly in cling wrap and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
3. Dust the benchtop with flour, then roll the pastry into a long rectangle into a long rectangle three times longer than it is wide, then fold it in three like a business letter. Roll out again to the same length and repeat the fold and roll another 2 times (not rolling out after the last fold).
4. Wrap in cling wrap and rest in the fridge for another 30 minutes before using it to allow the gluten to relax.

To make the chicken filling

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C/gas mark 7/425ºF. In a heavy-based frying pan, fry the streaky bacon strips in the oil until beginning to crisp, then add the sliced mushrooms and soften them in the pan with the streaky bacon.
2. Turn the chicken strips in the flour and thyme (you could toss them about in a freezer bag), and then melt the butter in the streaky bacon-and-mushroom pan before adding the floury chicken and all the flour left in the bag. Stir around with the streaky bacon and mushrooms until the chicken begins to colour.
3. Pour in the hot stock and Marsala, stirring to form a sauce, and let this bubble away for about 5 minutes.
4. Take two 300ml / 1¼ cup pie-pots (if yours are deeper, don’t worry, there will simply be more space between contents and puff pastry top) and make a pastry rim for each one – by this I mean an approx. 1cm / ½ inch strip curled around the top of each pot. Dampen the edges with a little water to make the pastry stick.
5. Cut a circle bigger than the top of each pie-pot for the lid, and then divide the chicken filling between the two pots.
6. Dampen the rim of the pastry again and then pop on the lid of each pie, sealing the edges with your fingers or the underneath of the prongs of a fork.
7. Cook the pies for about 20 minutes turning them around halfway through cooking. Once cooked, they should have puffed up magnificently.

Don’t be fool by the photography, is actual taste so much better. You can skip the pastry making by getting a shop brought pastry is fine with this recipe. Everyone is busy, this is the express way to get satisfied in cooking. Don’t you think?