Yo. As I’ve said previously, I take breaks from this project when life gets in the way. This summer was BANANAS, and fall seems to be quickly passing me by as well. I haven’t given up on cooking and photographing recipes, but I seem to have dropped the ball on actually writing them up and posting them.
I made the first attempt to rectify this earlier today when I uploaded about 600 pictures from two memory cards that I’ve filled up since May of this year. I made the second when I set up all the folders to start organizing the pictures (we’re talking over 50 recipes here).
Here’s the third: a recipe I cooked back sometime in early 2019, 6-58: Chicken Pie with Puff Pastry. This has been in various draft stages since April, and I’m finally finishing it NOW. This isn’t even part of the memory card dump from today–that’s how far behind I am.
This is essentially chicken pot pie. I mean, how is it not? The major difference between this and Marie Callender’s is that this one only has pastry on top.
This recipe is written for one BIG pot pie. I think I’m going to split them into individual servings using some new dishes I found in the clearance bin of the grocery store.
Ingredients. Pretty simple stuff–the only change is my now-standard vegetarian/vegan-ization that I’ve been doing with most of these recipes now. For this one, I’ve swapped a real chicken for chik’n strips, which I plan to cube. Consider it a “chik’n” pot pie.
Cooking up the chik’n strips.
Chopping carrots. The goal is to get all the pieces of the pie to be roughly the same size–that makes each bite easier to eat and more consistent.
After cooking and chopped the chik’n. I realize this isn’t quite the same as using one whole real chicken, but since the end result will be cooked and chopped either way, we’re just taking a bit of a different route to the same destination.
Since I changed the protein slightly, it changed the overall cooking methods as well (a common challenge when converting recipes).
Since the carrots needed to simmer in chicken water, I made chik’n water instead with the previously cooked chunks and some vegan chicken-flavored broth. I’ll use that chik’n water later on the same way as the regular chicken water would be.
Reduced chik’n broth. You can see the cooked chik’n and carrots in the back. The recipe calls for skimming off the fat, but this method doesn’t really yield a whole lot of fat in the first place, so you can skip that if you convert it.
Chopping celery to match my carrots and chik’n.
Sautéeing the celery in butter. I still switch back and forth between real butter and veg alternatives, but I’m leaning more towards the latter these days more and more.
Made a roux and thickened up the pan sauce.
Tossing in the frozen veggies.
Here’s my new dishes I was telling you about–these are soup bowls (I think). However, they work great as individual pot pie containers as well.
I got 4 individual pot pies out of it, which is probably more like 2 servings each. However, most pot pies are about this size (and contain more pastry/fat), so I think you’ll be good.
After baking. I’d say those are pretty nice looking pot pies.
Wrapped each in plastic wrap after they cooled and froze them for later eating. Who needs Marie?
After defrosting/microwaving. Looks like a pretty standard pot pie to me.
Grade: B+
