Source in .scx format of Chicken pie
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<RecipeHeader>
<RecipeTitle>Chicken pie</RecipeTitle>
<Category></Category>
<NbPersons>4</NbPersons>
<PortionYield></PortionYield>
<PrepTime></PrepTime>
<TotalTime></TotalTime>
<Source></Source>
</RecipeHeader>
<IngredientList>
<IngredientText>The new clothes season is on us again. Shop windows gleam enticingly with nipped-in jackets and neat little skirts in winter black and berry colours. We’ll make a hundred minute fashion calculations as we flip through magazines that urge us to update our wardrobes. Yet however much we know that this winter we’re supposed to leave the house in perfectly tailored Roland Mouret, most hysterical wardrobe crises will result in a relieved lunge for a pair of jeans.
Jeans: with a velvet jacket for a date; a pretty top for a party; or sneakers for the cinema. Baggy jeans for painting the house, or tight with painted nails. Jeans are beyond fashion.
There is a culinary equivalent to jeans that quells the panic when your cookbooks are strewn around the kitchen as you reject recipes for being too fiddly, too messy or too stressful. Pie. Pies are what you reach for when all else fails. They can hold their own in any company, riding the ethical fish storm yet still on speaking terms with an Aberdeen Angus. You can leave them in the freezer for months and they will emerge perfect for any occasion. You can eat them piping hot or cold. With a little clever accessorising, pies can make the transition from day to night, and even brave the day-after-the-night-before.
Food has become as susceptible to fashion as clothes are. We pore over new restaurant menus and take ideas to the supermarket just as we look to the labels of Bond Street for direction and seek out their shadows on the high street. We have flitted from northern Italy to peasant southern fare; we have toyed with Asia’s spices while conducting an affair with the Pacific Rim, and settled for a while with East-West fusion before returning home via North Africa and Spain.
Pies are simply not that interested in fashion, but they can speak its language if they need to. They can be topped with either the cashmere fluff of mashed potato or the elegant flake of golden pastry. They can hide lumpy bits and stretch to feed from 12 to 14. And they have very distinct features. You might find, for instance, that a chicken pie is the Gap of the food world: reliable, unpretentious, safe in any snob-free environment. Something a bit more exotic would be needed for a D&G pie; a crab filo parcel perhaps, its leaves shining with butter and cinnamon richness. Marc Jacobs would probably give a retro-cool nod to steak and kidney, while the pastel pinks and yellows of a luxe fish pie whisper Ralph Lauren.
Just as jeans can adapt to the seasons — cropped, stretch or stonewashed — so it is with the pie: summer’s tart berries will call for a rich shortcrust and a drenching of cream, while winter could not be so without the red-brown meatiness of a shepherd’s pie bubbling up through buttery mash.
Is there such a thing as the perfect pie? Indeed, there are many. Mine is chicken. The pie of my childhood was the chicken pasty from the farm shop on the way back from riding near my grandmother’s house. We’d be allowed one each, my sisters and I, its greasy flakes attaching themselves to our chins. My teenage years belong to my stepmother’s deep-dish chicken pie, with the shortest of crusts and extra gravy. Its elegant topnotes of tarragon would waft up the stairs every Saturday morning. Nowadays I will find a way to stuff chicken into any crust: flatbreads with pistachios and orange-blossom water; filo with chilli, ginger, coriander and mint; or a Sunday-night mash, with bacon, mushroom and leek.
As the autumn leaves turn and fall, knives are sharpened in the kitchen to prepare for the new season’s ingredients: blackberries, apples, game and mushrooms. Every year we use them differently in search of variety. Joyfully, no food fashion snob will ever be able to sneer at a good pie, for they are timeless and endlessly adaptable. But you may have to buy all those new clothes in the next size up.
Ingredients
For the filling:
6 mixed chicken portions or 1 chicken, jointed</IngredientText>
<Ingredient id="737" quantity="2.0" unit="" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="0.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>2</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>bay leaves</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1111" quantity="1.0" unit="" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="110.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>1</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>onion</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment>quartered</IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1111" quantity="1.0" unit="" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="110.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>1</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>onion</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment>finely chopped</IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="753" quantity="4.0" unit="sprigs" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="0.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>4 sprigs</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>fresh tarragon</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="-1" quantity="4.0" unit="tablespoons" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="0.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>4 tablespoons</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>roughly chopped fresh tarragon</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1119" quantity="1.0" unit="" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="89.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>1</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>leek</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment>sliced into fine discs, woody head reserved a few whole peppercorns</IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1922" quantity="500.0" unit="ml" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="1.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>500ml</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>fresh chicken stock</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1750" quantity="500.0" unit="ml" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="1.0166667" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>500ml</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>milk</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="-1" quantity="200.0" unit="ml" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="0.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>200ml</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>double cream</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1759" quantity="2.0" unit="oz" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="28.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>2oz</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>butter</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="810" quantity="2.0" unit="oz" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="28.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>2oz</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>flour</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<IngredientText>a capful of dry Vermouth
sea salt and pepper For the crust:</IngredientText>
<Ingredient id="811" quantity="240.0" unit="g" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="1.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>240 g</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>white flour</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment>preferably Italian 00,</IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="1759" quantity="170.0" unit="g" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="1.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>170g</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>cold butter</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<Ingredient id="702" quantity="1.0" unit="pinch" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="0.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>pinch</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>salt</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment></IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
<IngredientText>iced water with a squeeze of lemon</IngredientText>
<Ingredient id="313" quantity="1.0" unit="" comment="" defaultState="true" weightGram="50.0" included="true" cooked="false" isAutoId="true" isAutoWeight="true" isAutoUnit="true">
<IngredientQuantity>1</IngredientQuantity>
<IngredientItem>egg, beaten</IngredientItem>
<IngredientComment>to glaze</IngredientComment>
</Ingredient>
</IngredientList>
<RecipeText>Method
Make the pastry by grating the cold butter into a bowl with the flour and salt. Rub through your fingers to combine. Add the iced water and lemon juice tablespoon by tablespoon until it comes together. Knead with floured hands and divide into two balls, one twice the size of the other. Wrap both in clingfilm and leave in fridge for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. In a large saucepan, simmer the milk with the bay leaves, sprigs of tarragon, quartered onion, leek top and peppercorns for 15 min, then add the chicken and poach gently for 20-25 min. Set the chicken aside to cool, reserve the liquid, and discard the rest of the solids.
Bring the chicken stock to the boil, add the chopped onion and leek discs for a minute and then remove to the pie dish with a slotted spoon, reserving the liquid in the pan and boiling to reduce by half.
When the chicken is cool, remove skin and bones, and shred into bite-sized chunks with a fork, adding them to the pie dish. In a separate saucepan, make a roux with the butter and flour, using 100ml of the reduced stock and the poaching milk until it has the consistency of double cream. Combine in the dish with the chicken, onion, leeks and two thirds of the chopped tarragon, and season. Set aside to cool.
Roll out both pastry balls into discs 5mm thick. Line the pie dish with the large disc, brushing the edges with the beaten egg. Fill with the chicken mixture. Cover the pie with the remaining pastry, sealing the join with the tines of a fork dipped in cold water. Cut a cross in the centre to release steam, using a blackbird to hold up the pastry if the dish is deep. Glaze with the beaten egg and bake for 15 min before turning the oven down to 180C/Gas 4 and baking for another hour.
For extra gravy: Just before you eat, reheat the remaining reduced stock, adding the Vermouth, and boil off the alcohol. Reduce to a simmer, stirring in the cream and the rest of the chopped tarragon. Season well and decant to a jug.
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