Down in my little recipe hut, I've got the perfect sharing dish to kick off our Friday night
I am so excited to give you a recipe for an amazing homemade pie. Beautiful crumbly pastry
Chicken, sweet leeks, creamy sauce, this is gonna be amazing. It starts here with a chicken. So a
nice free-range chicken. What I want to do first is cut it in half. Just hold the chicken, get the
tip, cut down the back and then down the breast. So in a pan we'll have just a tiny bit of oil
So chicken goes into the pan. I'm using the whole chicken. You get maximum flavour from the bones and
the bone marrow but also the joy of white meat, brown meat and the sweet meat is incredible. So
we've got a second pan on a medium heat and what I want to do is start frying off a beautiful base
to give you the best pie filling ever. For that I'm gonna start with some smoky bacon
Just cut ourselves some little lardons. So into the pan we go. Add a little oil
and that is an incredible welcoming party for vegetables and herbs
So we'll start off with thyme, rip that in and then base vegetables. 1 heart of celery, 1 onion
1 carrot and 1 leek roughly sliced into sort of 1, 1 and 1/2 cm dice. Into the pan
I don't want the veg so small that it's going to disappear. I want to have chunks of veggies
So about 10-15 minutes of gentle frying. So that gives us time to clean down and make the pastry
Add 500 grams of plain flour to a bowl. A pinch of sea salt and 250 grams of very cold butter
So by grating the butter like that it just makes it so easy to rub into the flour. Pour in 100
ml of cold water and bring it together and kind of hug it. No kneading, just hugging. That's
what we want and I'm going to just form it into 2 balls. Divide so it's a third for the lid and
two thirds for the base. Wrap them up and flatten out and leave to chill in the fridge until needed
If you look in here now we have a nice bit of colour. That means we've got mega flavour already
I want to turn this into a beautiful sauce to stew that chicken... right, to pull out all that
flavour. I'm going to use scrumpy. Beautiful cloudy cider. Just a nice little swig goes in. The smell is
phenomenal and we want to cook all of that cider away. Go in with a heaped teaspoon of English
mustard, 2 heap tablespoons of plain flour, a litre of chicken stock and bring to a simmer
At this point in the story we've created that stewing environment and we're taking that lovely
crispy golden chicken and those bones are straight down into that sauce. So lid on top and just let it
blip, blip away for around about an hour until the thigh meat pulls off the bone and that
will be incredible. This fat in the pan by the way I'm going to keep that. For a little secret later
So the chicken is done. If I just pull the thigh meat and it should just fall off the bone. That's
what we want. Super tender, super delicious, happy days. So meat into here. I have been slicing up
500 grams of button mushrooms. By putting the mushrooms in at this stage you get really sweet
nutty mushroom flavour. We'll stir that through. Okay, so now two forks and just pull that tender meat
from the bone. At this point the bones have done their job. They've given you awesome flavour
Carefully remove all the bones. Add the chunks of chicken back to the stew and mix through
2 tablespoons of crème fraiche. So I want this stew to do two things. Give me amazing perfect
filling and then also an incredible sauce and we can have both by one easy little trick that I love
Get yourself a pan, get yourself a colander and sieve that filling. The sauce will go through
it and you can reheat that later to pour on top of your pie. Put that to one side and now
we can make our pie. So we'll get our pastry out of the fridge and we'll roll this out so
it's gonna line this beautiful pie dish. What I will do is just give a little bit of olive oil to
the bottom of the dish and give it a rub. Put your chilled pastry in between a sheet of greaseproof
paper and roll it till it's half a cm thick. Add to the pie dish, pour in the cord filling
and roll out your pie lid. I don't care if it cracks. I embrace it. Look I'm gonna tear it. Oh no there's
a crack... it doesn't matter. We're going to just tear it up and put it in just like that. And as
we take in the sides we're going to create just a beautiful rustic pie. So just a little egg wash
So I'm going to cook that now for about an hour. Put it at the bottom of the oven. The
temperature will be 190° Celsius which is 375° Fahrenheit and that will be a thing of beauty
So that glorious pie is nearly done and I've just knocked up a bit of mashed potato. You
guys know how to do that but what you might not know how to do is make cabbage beautiful. We're
going to do something quick and delicious and amazing. Roughly slice up the cabbage and add
to the chicken fat you saved earlier. Cook over a high heat until softened and lightly charred
add a splash of water a teaspoon of mustard and a pinch of salt and white pepper. These three things
bring out the most wonderful flavour. Just takes your everyday cabbage to another place
The cabbage is done. Our gravy is bubbling away and reheating nicely and then yes
that my friends is what I wanted. Look at that! Bubbling, blipping. Look...
just so, so good. The hispi cabbage that is soft and succulent but it's got the char
Good old mashed potato. Always a good friend of a pie. Then we'll get a gravy boat. This
poured over the top of your pie will be a joyful thing. Oh look how flaky that pastry is
I'm very excited. Come on! Look at that, we've got the chunks of chicken, the flaky pastry. That is a
slice of heaven. Let's have a dunk, mash some of that amazing cabbage done good and then gravy
Let's get in there
Hallelujah. Now using the whole chicken gives you the hyper flavour. Everyone deserves
to enjoy a good homemade pie. Guys what are you waiting for