Serial Hobbiest
Refused to decide, so I'm doing it all
Chicken Mushroom pie!
Prep time: 1.5 hours (I mean, probably not that long. It felt like a long time. And I’m assuming we include cooking the pie innards? Currently, yes.)
Cooking time: 15-ish mins for the blind bake, 30 mins for the pie
Shelf life: No idea. It’s delicious. It’s not going to be around for long. But refrigerate for sure.
Ingredients: this recipe can obviously be halved. Aside from the onion and the sage, I doubled things. Or in the garlic’s case, added three.
Wine! For drinking. Because it makes the cooking. And a podcast of your choice. For me it was MFM.
- 4-5 ready-rolled puff pastry sheets (I know it’s lazy. I don’t care.)
- 5 cloves garlic, crushed (or however many you want. User discretion, I say.)
- 1 onion, finely chopped (2 onions could also work)
- 1.1kg chicken thigh fillet cut into chunks (chunked?)
- 500g mushrooms, chopped how you like it (note on mushrooms: mine are called white mushrooms, but I doubt the type matters enormously. Just don’t be that person that tries to make Enokitake mushrooms work. Common sense, people. Or if you do and it’s great, let me know so I can try it, too.)
- 2x70g butter (so, technically 140g)
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 2/3 cups flour
- 15 g sage, chopped
- 1 egg
Other ingredients I ended up using
2 bunches of broccolini
Rice, uncooked – this is not really an ingredient, more of a utensil
And, finally, the hierarchy, if you will:
1) Preheat the oven – 200⁰C (fan forced)
2) Make sure all your ingredients are ready: you can put the crushed garlic in with the chopped onion. The chicken all chunked, the butter separated into two 70g lots, etc.
3) (Blind baking) If the oven is at temperature, use a little of the butter to rub inside the pie dishes/glass dishes that you’ll be using for your pie. Then lay a pastry sheet in the bottom and up the sides of all dishes you’re using (I needed 2 dishes). Place baking paper over the pastry, rice within the baking paper to weigh down the paper and pastry, and pop the whole lot in the over to blind bake.
4) Bake for roughly 10 minutes (during which time you can continue on with some of the other steps – efficiency). When the pastry starts to brown around the edges, remove from oven, remove baking paper with rice – ponder whether baked rice is still good to cook – use big spoon to squish sides back into place, place back in oven for five minutes to bake bottom as well, which will then also need to be squished back into place after.
5) Chuck the first lot of 70g butter (minus what you used to grease the dish[es]) into a large, deep, frying pan to melt.
6) Once the butter is melted and simmering, add chicken chunks and cook until brown or nearly cooked through.
7) Remove and set aside.
8) Chuck the second 70 g of butter into the frying pan.
9) Once simmering, add garlic and onion. Revel in the smell.
Side note: It’s roughly at this stage that I had to take a ten minute detour to clean up the empty wine bottle that had missed the recycling bin and shattered.
10) When the onions have softened, add the mushrooms and cook for a couple of minutes.
11) Add in the stock. Stir
12) When it boils, add the chicken back in. Stir.
13) Add, stirringly, sage to taste.
14) Add the flour and stir until it begins to thicken a bit.
15) Remove from heat and allow to cool a bit. Roughly 20 minutes.
16) While waiting, clean a little? Drink more wine? Or prepare the broccolini if you decided to go with broccolini?
17) Scoop the mixture into the dishes on top of the pastry until full.
18) Add further pastry sheets over the top, making sure to stick the sides shut.
19) Poke forky holes in the top.
20) Whisk up the egg in a small bowl and paint some of the whisked egg to the top of the pastry.
21) Put the pies(!) in the oven for 30 minutes.
22) When done, should be light golden. The house should smell delicious and your mouth should be watering.
I friggin’ loved what came out of the oven. I hope you do too.
Serial Hobbiest 