I told The Boyfriend recently that I'd make him a pie. Any pie he wants. This was before Thanksgiving so I'm thinking maybe apple is his favorite? Pumpkin? Mincemeat? The response...
Chicken and Mushroom Pie
Okay. So not exactly what I had in mind but delicious nonetheless. And luckily for me, many of the same principles apply. We'll start with filling. I started by cooking onions in butter in a saute pan until translucent. Then I added thinly sliced carrots followed by sliced mushrooms and frozen peas. Herbage consisted of thyme and sage picked right off the plants. I sprinkled the whole mess with some flour to help thicken it up while cooking in the oven since I knew that the mushrooms and peas would continue to release moisture. Now gravy. The sauce component of this pot pie is technically a veloute. Start with equal parts butter and flour. Once this cooks and loses its raw smell, you add chicken stock to create what is for all purposes, a gravy. Instead of butter, I used duck fat leftover from a duck I cooked coated with Chinese Five Spice powder. So this duck fat has an extra, exotic spice to it. Very subtle but tasty. The gravy and filling get mixed together and set aside to cool slightly.
Of course the most important aspect to this is the pie crust. I have never bought pie crust and personally never plan to start. Homemade pie crust is far better in both flavor, price and time. Yes I said time. In the time it takes you to drive to the store, you can have one finished. Customization for the dish at hand is also possible. A pie crust for Chicken Pot Pie needs to have great flavor but also all over brown-ness (if I can use that as a word.) It should be light and flaky but still substantial enough to not get soggy. The following techniques produced that perfect crust.
Start with everything cold, cold, cold. Butter, lard, flour, milk. All cold. I started by cutting in 1/2 stick of unsalted butter and 4 tablespoons lard into 1 1/2 cups flour with a large pinch of salt. Once the butter is the size of large peas, I added milk a splash at a time until it began to come together. Began is the key word here. Not all of it is in a ball, there is still loose flour. I put it in some plastic wrap to form the ball and created layers by folding the dough several times. This went into the fridge to rest while the filling was prepared, about 45 minutes. I divided the dough into two pieces (top and bottom) and rolled them out for a small, oblong casserole dish. I am now deeply enamored by this dish. First of all, it is green. If you know me, you know that if anything is green, I love it. But most importantly, the dish is clay. Not glass, ceramic or metal. Clay pie dishes brown crusts to perfection because they distribute heat so well. This particular clay dish is Emile Henry and was *free* to me because I work in a kitchen store and sometimes we get free samples. This dish produced an astounding crust. All over flaky and delicious but best of all the bottom crust was brown and crispy with no leakage.
Perfect Chicken and Mushroom Pie.
