A shortcut chicken pot pie.
So I have your usual suspects here,
carrots, celery and onion going into some melted butter
or you can use olive oil with lots of fresh thyme
and I add leeks to my mixture as well.
So leeks, carrots, celery and onion,
a nice handful of fresh picked thyme
all go into the skillet
and really all we're doing here
is cooking out the vegetable.
The chicken's fully cooked, right?
So we're going to get the juices out of the veg
by adding salt and pepper.
Salt draws the liquid out of all things
and you can adjust this.
You can add peas, you can add mushrooms.
This is just the basic building blocks
that I always use as my go-to
and we're gonna add a little sprinkle of pepper
or white pepper or a combination of both.
I rarely make anything without garlic.
My husband and I both love garlic.
So I'm gonna add a little garlic
but that's gilding the lily.
This is a delicious mixture as it is.
Now, the real time saver here and calorie saver
is I only make single crust for my pies
and I cook the pastry, the puff pastry in this case,
I cook it separately so it gets crispy on the bottom
and the top and it can cook while this mixture's cooking
and I use Dufour puff pastry.
I'm sure there are other brands.
This is the only one I ever see at the market
but heads up, when you're using frozen puff pastry,
it has to sit in the refrigerator for two hours to defrost
or you can pop it in there overnight
but it's not something you take straight from the freezer
and throw on the counter.
You're going to just barely wake it up out of the package.
I lightly floured the counter and your hands and the pin
and then just give it a little roll.
Now, here's how I do this.
If you're going to serve out of a round vessel like this,
you can put this down and cut around the shape
of what you're going to be serving from.
If you're going to make a dish,
a giant casserole of chicken pot pie like this, what I do is
and that's a traditional nine by 13 shape there,
what I do is I cut the sheet into six portions
and then you can use a little pie cutter
to put a shape like an autumn leaf or a heart or a star
in the center of each of these
or you can just make a little cross
with the tip of your paring knife.
So now when you serve this,
you'll have a topping for the entire casserole
but it's also already pre-portioned
so everybody can take a piece of that puff pastry crust
without disturbing.
It won't all sink down into the filling underneath.
So we're gonna cook these separate
on parchment lined baking sheet at 425
until they're golden and puffed.
This is just egg wash of course,
splash of water with an egg.
Brush it and pop it in the oven.
To our vegetables and bay leaf and thyme,
I added about three tablespoons of flour over the break.
I've been stirring that around.
So the flour's cooking out a bit.
We're now going to add our star ingredient,
the Guinness Blonde.
Of course, any lager or golden beer will work.
The reason we work with any spirits
is to add acidity and depth of flavor.
I'm gonna add bone broth or chicken stock
to make this nice and saucy.
Okay, let that thicken up a hair
and then my secret ingredient
is a fat squirt of Dijon mustard
which is delicious in this filling.
A little fresh grated nutmeg and of course the chicken.
This is just rotisserie chicken.
I was in the middle of cutting the last piece of breast.
You can just pull it if you want long, thin strands
or you can dice it if you want to chunkier pie filling.
White and dark meat combined.
Into the hot tub.
Our fat squirt of Dijon.
Once around the pan.
Stir this combo together and now this is delicious as is.
I like to gild the lily a little bit
and I finish mine with creme fraiche
or a couple of turns of the pan of heavy cream.
We just pour this right into our casserole.
It's a fake out chicken pot pie and instead of two crusts,
I arranged the six portions of our puff pastry
right up on top which is, right, it's cool, right,
and then people can serve themselves
and they get their own top and it's crispy on both sides.
(applause)