20 February 2014

Chicken Pie with Bread Sauce - The Very Best Comfort Food

Chicken Pie with Bread Sauce

Comforting food for another rainy day


Things have been a bit delayed in blogland.  I have been suffering from terrible debilitating headaches and have been in hospital being poked, scanned and drained while they determine what is wrong.  The really great news is that I don't have a haemorrhage, the even better news is that they did not tell me that is what they were looking for! 

I have never been a sufferer of headaches before, and my heart goes out to those who live with head pain on a regular basis.  Daily life is really affected when you are in pain and trying to maintain a normal home routine is practically impossible.  Mr EEE has been my rock and has kept me sane while I have been worrying myself silly.  I hope that the kids and the rest of the family have been blissfully unaware of all the tests and panicking.

Anyway, today is the first day in several weeks that I have felt able to cook and write for the blog.  I found this wonderful recipe for  Chicken Pie with Bread Sauce on one of my favourite blogs - Tales of Pigling Bland.  I cheated and used ready made shortcrust pastry, and I left out the sweetcorn as Master EEE  won't touch it, but otherwise I stuck to the recipe.  

It was a super easy recipe to follow and tastes absolutely delicious.






I have taken this recipe directly from Tales of Pigling Bland and give full credit there.  The photos are my own, but the ones on Pigling Bland are just gorgeous  and I would urge you to check them out.

Roast Chicken and Bread Sauce Pie
For the pastry:
110g plain flour
25g butter pinch salt
2 tsp dried sage
some ice cold water for mixing it together
egg for brushing
Put the flour and salt into a bowl, cut the butter into small cubes and add to the flour.
Rub the butter in with your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs (or pulse in a food processor). Stir in the sage.
A couple of tablespoons at a time, add water over the surface and used a table knife to cut through it and mix it together. Keep adding water slowly (try to add as little as possible) until you can bring all the mixture together into a ball with your hands.
Put the ball of pastry into a plastic bag and leave to rest in the fridge for 20mins.
Preheat the oven to 200C /400F
Roll out the pastry as thin as you can without it breaking and line either one large pie dish or 6 tartlet tins.
Brush with egg and prick with a fork.
Bake “blind” : you can fill the base with baking paper and baking beans/ teaspoons / foil or just check half way through and press the pastry down if it’s puffing up.
Bake for about 8mins or until turning golden.
For the filling:
1 packet Colmans onion sauce
1 packet Colmans bread sauce
3 small cooked chicken or turkey breasts, shredded  (or equivalent from leftover roast)
2 tbsp frozen/tinned sweetcorn
2 tbsp frozen peas (or other leftover veg from roast dinner)
Optional: some breadcrumbs
Make up the bread sauce to the packet instructions but with a little less milk so that it’s thicker.
Put to one side as you make up the onion sauce.
Add the milk to the packet mixture and whisk together.
Start to heat and add the chicken, peas and sweetcorn – keep stirring as it thickens.
Make sure everything is thoroughly heated through.
Season as required.
Spoon the chicken mixture into the pie cases and top with the bread sauce.
Sprinkle with breadcrumbs if required.
Pop in the oven for 5 mins or under the grill to brown.
Eat with cranberry sauce and whatever else you fancy.

 

Blog Design by Bonjour Belle Designs