Chicken Pot Pie!

Tonight my friend Kari came over for dinner.  She is my tech-yoda, and we have a great system set up where I feed her and she helps me stay up with the latest and greatest in technology.  I decided to make chicken pot pie tonight, because I saw a really cool looking pastry crust recipe I wanted to try, and chicken pot pie is one of the best crust-related dishes I know.

I found the crust recipe at Closet Cooking.  Here's a link to the recipe.  I followed the instructions exactly, and it came out beautifully.

For the filling, I totally winged it.  It was one of those ice box cleaner-outer kinda things.  I started by poaching 6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs in white wine, chicken stock and water.  I strained the broth out and saved it to make the sauce.  I put the chicken on a plate in the ice box to cool so I could chop it.  I used the same pot and heated a few tablespoons of olive oil.  I dropped half a chopped white onion, some diced carrot, and some diced new potatoes in.  I seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper, as well as a pinch of poultry seasoning.   After about 10 minutes, I added 2 tablespoons of butter and let it melt.   Then I stirred in about 3 tablespoons of all purpose flour.  I let that cook a few minutes and added about a cup and a half of the chicken broth I saved from poaching the meat.  I stirred constantly and brought it up to a bubble.  It thickened nicely.  Next I added about half a bag of frozen peas, about 1/2 a cup of heavy cream, and tasted to adjust the seasoning.  By this time the sauce was really thick.  I took the chicken out of the ice box and cut it in a rough dice.  I stirred it into the sauce.

The pastry recipe made 2 crusts, so I put the first in the bottom of my pyrex pie dish.  I filled it with the chicken mixture, and put the other crust on top.  I cut some vents in it, painted some egg wash on it, stuck it on a cookie sheet, and baked it at 375 for about 30 or 40 minutes.

Although it didn't come out of the pie dish in one piece, it was delicious!