MBE v tigs78 chicken and leek pie challenge

jobbingmusician

I really think you should both be cooking a (HM) short pastry pie. If you involve puff pastry, even shop-bought, the overall appearance of the final pie is going to be heavily influenced by the quality of the pastry. And PP is much more sensitive to the quality of your oven!!!!

Take the scientific route - reduce variables caused by puffage and let us judge the quality of your HM short pastry as part of the whole!!!

bigmuffins

Oooops!

:eek:

and the bake-off hasn't even started yet!
I will have to make alternative arrangements - luckily I have a secret stash ...




is not all for me ....honest is to share with you all!

mrbadexample

tigs78 wrote:

The bacon one (waitrose one) sounds good but it's massive, it says to use 6 chicken breasts!

Is that a lot?

mrbadexample

jobbingmusician wrote:

I really think you should both be cooking a (HM) short pastry pie. If you involve puff pastry, even shop-bought, the overall appearance of the final pie is going to be heavily influenced by the quality of the pastry. And PP is much more sensitive to the quality of your oven!!!!

Take the scientific route - reduce variables caused by puffage and let us judge the quality of your HM short pastry as part of the whole!!!

To be honest, I'm up for this. Whaddya think tigs....HM shortcrust? :think:

mrbadexample

Ok, there are lots of recipes and suggestions, but I think we need to build our own. Would I be right in thinking we need about 4 elements to the recipe:

1. Pastry
2. Chicken
3. Leeks
4. Sauce

If I break it down a bit it should be more manageable. Quantities is where I'll need help most: we've got to make it fit our dishes.

So, I'll need to know how to make shortcrust pastry, from scratch, bloke style. How much chicken, and how to cook it. How many leeks, and how to cook them. Complete instructions for the sauce. What to do with the whole lot once it's assembled.

Should it have pastry on the top and bottom, or just the top?

Addiscomber

If you want a double crust pie (pastry underneath and on top) you should use shortcrust pastry. No point in using puff pastry underneath meat and sauce as it just won't be able to puff. However any double crust pie is likely to have a soggy bottom. I reckon that bought pies are made double crust for the portability aspect, otherwise they would have to be sold including the dish, which just wouldn't work. Cooking for yourself allows more options.

Looking at recipes for chicken pies, they mostly seem to have just a pastry lid, which means that using a more attractive ceramic dish is possible, and for serving at the table if desired.

To answer your earlier question, 6 chicken breasts would be quite a lot, and expensive too :eek:

mrbadexample

Addiscomber wrote:

Looking at recipes for chicken pies, they mostly seem to have just a pastry lid, which means that using a more attractive ceramic dish is possible, and for serving at the table if desired.

Right then, mine's just getting a lid. Edit: oh no it isn't, not after that post below...I'm doing that.

Do you think about three chicken breasts would be right for my dish?

jobbingmusician

Shortcrust pastry from scratch, bloke style.

Do you have scales? You need twice as much flour (plain) as fat (butter is nicest. If you use cheap butter, you don't need salt). You also need some raw butterbeans or similar (I'm SO SURE someone else will be along to comment on this bit!!! - see below).

The day before you make the pastry, stick a mug of water in the fridge (;) secret hint, not essential).

I would advise about 150g flour and 75g butter. That's for an ordinary size pie dish - if you're using that ceramic thing, double these ingredients. Or 4oz and 2oz butter if you prefer. Turn on the oven at about 175C. Remove any rings you wear and wash your hands. Put the ingredients into a bowl and stick your (nice clean) fingers into the butter. The idea is to break the butter up into loads of little fine bits, covered in flour. On a good day, with practice, this takes 3 mins. It will take you longer and probably the phone will ring in the middle.

When this looks like fine breadcrumbs, you're done. Now you add as little water as possible to make it stick together. Remember that water you put in the fridge yesterday? Cold water is best. Mix it in with your fingers, and ignore the phone which is normally ringing again now. Add water carefully, gradually, until the whole lot JUST sticks together in a lump. If you've got time, bung the lump in the fridge for 20 mins, wash hands and go and ring the people back who rang you at the critical moments above.

Find a flat surface and move your arm across it so that all the papers, books, etc. fall on to the floor. (If you are an advanced pastrymaker you do this in advance before your hands are dirty, but I never remember). Clean the empty surface, dry it and sprinkle with flour. Wham the pastry on to the flour and sprinkle the top of it with about a tablespoon more of flour.

Take your rolling pin (or wash a wine bottle and dry it) and use this to roll the pastry out. If you are a bloke (or me) you will find the pastry doesn't roll out incredibly neatly. The bit that's going to show is the lid, right? So roll out a very rough shape about twice as big as the pie (pies have pastry on the bottom). Put your pie dish on to the pastry upside down and draw round it with a knife. Now CAREFULLY lift this circle/oblong if ceramic thing off the surface, and put it on a plate in the fridge.

Shovel the rest of the pastry into a heap and roll out again. You are aiming for this remaining stuff to be the base of the pie. This is tricky as you don't want to waste food and what you have left is just about the right amount. (you could cheat by making more pastry, but that isn't really very MSE - we will be judging on this) Roll it out so it's about the right shape, and lift it carefully into the pie dish. You should find that if you trim off the 'extra' bits they will fill in any holes you have. You can patch at this point - it's not going to show as this is the base of the pie!! Remember to leave a little bit of pastry spare if you want to impress us by having leaves on the top of the pie.

Now for the butterbeans. Take the base of the pie (the lid is still in the fridge at this point) and scatter bb over it. The surface should be covered with bb, one bb thick. Put in the oven for 12 minutes. This is called 'baking blind' and stops the bottom of the pie from being soggy.

The next post will have a suggestion for the filling, but I'll stop for the time being as this is a massive post!!

HTH - JM

mrbadexample

jobbingmusician wrote:

Now for the butterbeans. Take the base of the pie (the lid is still in the fridge at this point) and scatter bb over it. The surface should be covered with bb, one bb thick. Put in the oven for 12 minutes. This is called 'baking blind' and stops the bottom of the pie from being soggy.

The next post will have a suggestion for the filling, but I'll stop for the time being as this is a massive post!!

HTH - JM

Cheers, that's brilliant! :T

So, the butterbeans are just to hold it all in place then? What alternatives could I use? I've got some gravel.

jobbingmusician

OK, I'm sure lots of others will be along to comment on my pastry suggestions, but on to the pie filling. You can do this while you are blind baking the base.

Ingredients - half a roast chicken (see below), 2 leeks, olive oil, 2 tbsp flour (any sort), milk or cream according to how fattening you want it. You can use cornflour if you are a scaredy cat (previous posts indicate you won't need to). If you are using the ceramic container you will also need a ceramic eggcup or similar. You are going to put this in the middle of the pie to hold the lid up, so you need to find something NOW or abandon the idea of the ceramic dish.

Best thing is to treat yourself to a roast chicken the day before. If you cook this on a rack, you will have lots of juices and fat in the bottom of the pan - save these in the fridge. You can do it with chicken breasts, yes, but it won't be as nice as this recipe!!! Take the chicken off the bone, broken up into the sort of pieces you would like to find in a pie.

Wash and slice the leeks. Take your chicken juices out of the fridge and you'll find there's a layer of fat on the top. Use this, with some additional olive oil if neccessary, to soften the sliced leeks. (This means fry them GENTLY so they get floppy).

Now for the exciting bit. Once the leeks are nice and floppy, make sure your chicken juices (which have probably solidfied into a lump), milk/cream are within reach. Stir in 2 (4 if using the big dish) heaped tablespoons of flour and keep stirring for about 2 mins. Throw in the lump of chicken juices and keep stirring while it melts. The sauce will thicken up as the flour cooks. If it looks a bit thick, add milk/cream.

Add your chicken and stir some more. There you are, a delicious chicken and leek pie filling!

If using ceramic dish, put your lid support in the middle now.

Put filling into cooked pie bottom, take pie lid out of fridge and place on top. Use a fork to seal the edges so you get nice fork stripes. Decorate the top with leaves if you decided to do this. Brush the top with milk, or even milk and egg if you like a glazed finish!

Return to oven for 15-20 minutes or until it looks cooked. (Difficult to say exactly as we can't quite see how big your ceramic dish is!)

No doubt others will comment on this.......:D