Sunday Chicken Pie

Mandi and I were blessed to be able to cook the recipe for our 4^th blog insert together.  As usual this experience had its moments of hysterical laughter and utter silence as we contemplated and concentrated on our dishes.  Times like these are precious and I am grateful that we are granted these opportunities of spending quality time together….

Mandi:

To be honest, I don't remember this recipe and I am sure if mom did make it, she wouldn't have bothered with the crust. It was wonderful cooking together with someone who has a lot more technical expertise than me and to get good advice as we went along. 
It seems pastry and I do not gel well and both Deidre and I agreed that this pastry is not the best one for this dish. Personally I think I will opt for a puff pastry. The filling is absolutely delicious, really more-ish.
Sunday Chicken Pie
Pastry:
125g cake flour (unsifted)
Pinch of salt
100g cold butter or margarine
50 ml ice water (this is really not necessary)
Filling:
1kg chicken pieces
2 Onions diced
25g butter or margarine
100g mushrooms sliced
50ml chopped parsley
5 ml salt
5ml dried thyme
Pinch of pepper
200ml dry red wine
30 ml maizena
1 egg beaten (optional)
Sieve the flour and salt together. Rub in the butter until mixed together. Add water and mix till completely blended together.  Cover and cool for approximately an hour. 
Cover the chicken pieces with water, flavour with salt and pepper and cook. Allow the meat to cool in the stock and then debone.  Keep 100 ml of the stock.
Fry the onions in the butter until golden brown, add mushrooms and fry for a few minutes. Add meat, parsley , salt, thyme and pepper and mix together. Dish the meat into a shallow pie dish about 24cm in diameter.
Heat the wine and 100ml stock you kept over from the chicken.  Mix Maizena with a little water and add to the mixture.  Cook until nice and thick. Add to meat and mix gently.
Roll out your pastry on a floured surface. Place over your pie filling and neaten the edge of the pie dish.  Cut an opening or two in the pie crust to allow the steam to escape.  Brush with the beaten egg.  Bake 25 - 30 min at 200 ° C.
Delivers 6 portions.  If you have cooked your chicken the night before and deboned it, this recipe should take approximately 2 hours, start to finish.
My side dish was roasted potatoes and savoury peas.  Mom always made these as her side dish for pies (or a fresh salad).

Deidrè:

From the moment I knew that we were doing the Sunday Chicken Pie, I thought about making a deconstructed pie.  (I love the word ‘deconstructed’…. It sounds so Michelin star!)  But how I would manage it, that I had to figure out as I went along.  There were quite a few challenges with this recipe.  My initial idea was to make a puff pastry for my crust, but then I thought that it might be more in line with the original recipe to use the original crust….  Won’t do that again – I will use my gut instinct.  Not that the original crust is so bad.  It is a shortbread pastry which is most probably wonderful with other dishes, but not for this. It is extremely soft and difficult to roll out.  It also breaks when you place it on the pie dish (see Mandi’s photo of her dish).

Mandi and I sat the night before and worked through my recipe.  Some points had to change as I was cooking when I realised “Well, that’s not going to work……”  But overall, the final result was phenomenal (even if I have to say so myselfJ)

So, here goes:

Deconstructed Sunday Chicken Pie:

Pastry:

125 g unsifted flour

Pinch of salt

100 g cold butter

50 ml Water (not needed, use only if needed)

Sieve together salt & flour.

Add butter and mix well until blended. (You may need more flour to make it workable)

Place in clingwrap in the fridge (we made the pastry the night before and left it overnight in the fridge.  Because of the amount of butter used, the pastry was rock hard in the morning when we wanted to use it!  We left it to thaw in the sun and could work it about an hour later….

Filling:

1 kg chicken

10 carrots

250 g mushrooms, sliced

Chopped parsley, diced (50 ml)

2 onions, diced

25 g butter

5 ml dried thyme

Pinch pepper

5 ml salt

200 ml dry red wine

30 ml Maizena

1 egg beaten

(Ideal Milk – used to improve the gravy J)

Boil the chicken, salt and pepper until meat is soft and falls off the bones – allow to cool in the stock. (Please warn your guests that there might still be small bones in the mixture….)

Remove the chicken and debone.

Keep the stock!!

Set 200 ml of stock aside for the gravy and use the rest to boil the carrots.

Carrot layer:

Slice the carrots into 1 cm rounds and boil in the stock until soft.

Blend to make a mash (Mash should be stiff, not runny.  Add Maizena to get the desired consistency)

Mushroom layer:

Fry the mushrooms in butter until cooked, set aside

Chicken layer:

Fry the onions in butter until golden brown.

Add the meat, parsley, salt, thyme and pepper and mix.

Pastry layer:

Roll out the pastry until +/- 1 cm thick

Cut into rounds the same diameter as your stacking mould

Brush with beaten egg

Bake in a 200°C oven until golden brown

Gravy:

Heat 200 ml of stock and 200 ml of dry red wine.

Reduce to about 250 ml.

Mix a little cold water with Maizena to make a paste

Add to the wine/stock mixture until it forms a pouring consistency.

My gravy was a little stiff, so I added Ideal Milk until it reached the right consistency….it also made the gravy nice and creamy.

Construction:

Take your stacking mould (I don’t have one, so I found a 215g Chakalaka tin at Pick ‘n Pay and cut off both lids (top and bottom)  This is a perfect size for your stack)

Place your mould in the centre of your plate and add the carrot mash layer (about 1.5 cm)

Next place a layer of mushrooms on top of the carrot layer

Fill up with the chicken mixture (press down to make the stack compact)

Gently lift the stacking mould (chakalaka tin) off the filling – it should form a tower

Place the rounds of pastry on top of the tower.

Pour the gravy on the pastry and around the stack

Decorate with a fresh thyme leaf and serve.

Challenges:

1.  As mentioned above, the pastry is very finicky to work with – I would rather use a puff pastry

2.  Keeping the different elements warm until you serve – and while you plate up.  A warming tray would work well.

It took me the same time as Mandi to complete this dish from start to finish....