Pie time

Judging for the Bakels Supreme Pie Awards began in Auckland yesterday, and the results will be announced on Tuesday. One of the categories is chicken and vegetable. Last weekend, needing to produce a main course for four friends coming for a long lunch on Sunday, I decided to make a big chicken and vegetable pie. I'd had a really good one for dinner a while ago at my sister's place in Tauranga, so I'd asked her to photocopy the recipe for me. (Apologies - I didn't make a note of who wrote it or which book it came from - I'll check up with her later.)
          She assured me that the home-made pastry top was really easy, and it was - you make it in the food processor. But while the filling is easy too, it takes quite a while, because it's got so many neatly diced veges in it. Best to start early, I thought, so I made the pastry and the filling on Saturday, all ready to assemble and bake on Sunday.

Chicken and kumara pie with thyme pastry

For the pastry:
200g butter, diced and chilled
150g cream cheese, chopped
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
2-3 Tbsps milk
For egg wash:
1 egg
Another 2 Tbsp milk

Put all the ingredients except the milk and the egg in a food processor. Process until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
Add just enough milk to bring the dough together. (My food processor is too good - the pastry never clumps. I add a bit of milk, gather some crumbs together with my fingers and test to see if they will stick together. I used all 3 tablespoons of milk this time to get the pastry right.)
Tip the pastry onto a board and shape it into a flat disc. Wrap in plastic film and put in fridge until firm. (I made this Saturday afternoon, put it in the fridge and took it out about an hour before I wanted to use it on Sunday morning.)

For the filling:
(I bought more chicken thighs than stated, with bones in, as it was much cheaper that way. You can use breast, but thighs have more flavour. I removed the bones and boiled them for a while in commercial chicken stock. Then I removed them and happily nibbled all the yummy bits of meat off them before discarding them.)
1 kg skinless chicken thighs, boneless, or 1.2 kg with bones in
1/2 cup plain flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
knob of butter
100g lean bacon, roughly chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 large leek, sliced
1 large carrot, diced
1 Tbsp dried or finely chopped fresh tarragon (I had just enough left in the garden)
300g kumara, peeled and diced (1 cm pieces)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 cups chicken stock (the recipe had 1 cup, but this isn't enough)
1/2 cup cream

Season the flour with salt and pepper and place in a plastic bag. Cut the chicken into strips about 4-5 cm long, removing the bones if necessary. If you do have bones, put them on to boil gently in the chicken stock.
Shake the chicken pieces in teh flour to coat them. Remove them and shake off the excess flour, saving 1 Tbsp to use later.
Heat oil and butter in a large saute pan and cook chicken pieces until lightly golden. Use a slotted spoon to move chicken to a shallow dish.
Add bacon, onion, leek, carrot and tarragon to pan. Cook gently until tender and starting to brown slightly.
Add garlic to corner of pan and cook briefly. Add kumara and lemon zest and cook another 5 minutes.

(If you're making the filling the day before, stop at this point, cool the veges, and put them, the stock and the dish of chicken into the fridge.)

Assembly:
(If making next day, take pastry out of fridge an hour before assembling pie. Take out chicken, stock and veges. Put veges back in pan.)
Stir reserved flour into chicken stock. Pour into pan with veges and cook gently to make thick sauce. Add cream and stir well. Add chicken and any juices in dish. Mix gently. Check seasoning.
Simmer for a few minutes to heat through and make sure sauce is cooked. Place in large 7-cup ceramic or glass pie dish.

Preheat oven to 200C.
Roll out pastry to make a rough circle large enough to cover top of pie dish and hang down over the sides.(see pastry tips here).

Make egg wash by beating 1 egg thoroughly with 2 tablespoons of milk.
Roll pastry loosely over the rolling pin. As you do this, use a pastry brush to lightly coat the outer side of the pastry with egg wash. (This is the side that will be in contact with the pie filling - the egg wash acts as a seal to stop the pastry going soggy.)
Carefully unroll the pastry over the pie dish, egg wash side down. Press the pastry down around the rim or the sides (my dish was rimless) and trim it to leave a border all round the filling of about 2 cm. Crimp border and seal it in place with the egg wash (brush a little more onto the dish if necessary).
Cut a cross into the top of the pastry and add a few pastry "leaves" for decoration.
Brush the top of the pastry with the remaining egg wash.

Place pie on oven shelf positioned so that the top of the pie sits a little above the middle of the oven.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is deeply golden and the filling is bubbling.

So, to the long lunch: a slow meander through Donna's broccoli soup and rye bread, then the pie with boulanger potatoes (chunks of potato baked in stock), and Dale's orange cake with lemon syrup. I didn't need any dinner... well, only the last couple of bits of rye bread with a chunk of cheese and an apple.

Friday Smoked Fish Pie

I've always loved the sweet flavour of smoked fish. Of course it's better if it's a gourmet kind. Wellington's new Hill St Farmer's Market (Saturday mornings) sells superb fresh and smoked fish caught off the Wairarapa coast. But perfectly ordinary and often quite cheap supermarket smoked fish is not to be despised.
          Harvey's mother boiled smoked fish in water and served it with spuds. Mine poached it in milk with a bit of butter, and served it on hot buttered toast. I follow her, and Harvey has graciously got used to it. After I've poached it briefly in milk, it might turn into kedgeree or some kind of fish pie. It's the contrast between the creamy fish and the crisp pastry that I like, plus the fact it's so easy.
            Tonight I made a pie using savoury shortcrust pastry. For guests I would have made my own, but I had some ready-made sheets in the freezer. These quantities will serve four moderate eaters, or two hungry ones.

Smoked Fish Pie

Square, shallow baking tin and baking paper
250g  smoked fish
300 ml milk
a few pieces of butter
1 small onion, chopped finely
1 small red/yellow/orange pepper, seeded and chopped
2 Tbsps finely chopped parsley (preferably flat-leaved)
White sauce/bechamel (see the post on mushrooms for the recipe), made with the milk used for poaching the fish plus a little more milk and/or cream, so it's not too stiff
1 and 1/2 sheets savoury short-crust pastry
1 egg, beaten with a little milk, for glazing

Heat oven to 200C. Cook the onion and pepper in a little butter until soft, and set aside. Gently heat the milk with a little butter in a wide shallow pan and poach the fish for a few minutes, turning once, until the edge flakes easily. Remove fish to a plate, dark skin side up, scrape off the skin (it should come away very easily), flake the fish and remove any bones.

Make the white sauce using the poaching milk. Season, but go easy on the salt, as the fish is already quite salty. Pour the sauce into the poaching pan. Gently stir in the fish, cooked onion and pepper, and parsley, adding a little more milk or cream if necessary to keep it all moist but not runny. Taste for seasoning.

Line tin with baking paper to cover the bottom and come well up the sides - it can stick out at the top a bit. Press 1 square of pastry into the tin so it comes up the sides about 1.5 - 2 cm. Pour in fish mixture.

Cut remaining half sheet of pastry into strips and use these to make a lattice on top of the fish, with the ends of the strips pressed into the pastry sides - it works best done catty-corner across the tins. (As you can see, mine's quite rough - I was hungry!) Brush the whole top of the pie with the egg glaze.

Bake for 30 minutes, then lift out of the tin, using the sides of the paper sticking up around the pie, and place on a board ready for cutting. Serve with salad or whatever cooked veges you fancy.

You can also make large or small smoked fish envelopes using squares of puff pastry - I got this idea from a long-lost magazine clipping. Put a neat pile of the fish mixture (not too much) in the middle of the triangle that forms one side of the square, then brush the edges of the square with the egg, fold it over the fish and press the edges together firmly to make a triangle-shaped pasty, and glaze the top. Bake several of these on an oven tray lined with baking paper for about 20 minutes at 210C.