Chicken and mushroom pie

Chicken and mushroom pie

This recipe uses ready made puff pastry. In the 1970’s we struggled to make our way through a fatty collection of pastries working our way from shortcrust, rough puff, flaky to puff. In the 21st century you can buy really delicious buttery puff pastry and I see no point in wasting time making it!!

This recipe uses chicken thighs which I think have more flavour than the breasts and I’ve also chucked in some desiccated coconut to give a modern exotic taste – try it.

Look at the label and the Recipe sheet at the bottom of this page – done from The Nutrition Program.

Serves 4

chic

Ingredients

1 pack of ready rolled all butter puff pastry ( about 320 g but you won’t use it all)

Filling

3 chicken thighs (300 g)

300ml water

1 tbs vegetable oil

1 small onion – about 70 g

100g mushrooms – finely slices

20g plain flour

salt and black pepper

2 spring onions ( 50g) finely sliced

egg for glazing pastry

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C.
2. Boil the chicken thighs in a saucepan with 300ml water for 20 minutes – put the lid on to prevent loss of liquid. Remove the chicken and cool on a plate.
3. Add the oil to a large frying pan, fry the onion then add the mushrooms and stir for 3-4 minutes.
4. Remove the bone and skin from the chicken thighs and chop the flesh into bite sized pieces.
5. Strain the cooking liquid from the chicken to make about 200 ml.
6. Add the chicken pieces to the frying pan and stir in the flour.
7. Slowly add the liquid to make a thick sauce. Stir in the coconut if used. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Put the chicken in a pie dish and cover with chopped spring onions.
9. Roll out the pastry. Put strips of pastry round the edge of the pie dish.
10. Wet the top of this pastry with water, using a pastry brush then cut a piece of pastry to size to fit the top of the pie.
11. Seal the edges by pressing down with your fingers. Make fork marks round the edges and cut 3 slits in the top to let out steam.
12. Brush the pastry top with beaten egg to glaze.
13. Bake for 20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Remove half way through and brush with more egg to improve the pastry colour.
14. Serve with green beans, carrots and cauliflower.

Skills – pastry rolling, vegetable chopping, boning chicken, sauce making, seasoning