Chicken Pot Pie

After a trip to the farmer’s market Sunday morning, I suddenly found myself with more produce than I knew what to do with. I thought I should go ahead and cook most of it since I was getting my CSA box on Tuesday and Sundays are meant for cooking anyway.

Let’s just say I spent more than 6 hours washing, peeling, chopping, mixing, rolling, and cooking. I made a huge pot of green chile meets beef veggie soup and then I felt ambitious enough to try a chicken pot pie. I was trying to think of dishes that I could throw a ton of veggies into.

The picture taking thing is a little much for me some days when I get home from work, start cooking, and then have to delay my eating pleasure to take pictures (that come out fuzzy half the time anyway). So this weekend, I was motivated and full of energy. I took lots of pictures. I took photos of the produce raw and chopped and filling the pots. I took pictures of soup and green chile roasting in the pan. Then, I took pictures of the chicken pot pie before I even cut into it, and after it was dished up on the plate. And then, I ate.

But then, I went to take the photo card out of the camera, and no card. What can I say. I was tired. I did manage to get photos of the partially eaten pie. I even managed to make it look like it hadn’t been cut into, but alas, it loses its charm when I tell you that.



So here’s the pie recipe (slightly edited to fit what I actually did) taken from a chicken pot pie recipe and my new standby pie crust recipe.

Chicken Pot Pie
3 tablespoons butter, divided
1 medium onion, diced
carrots, peeled and diced
celery
English peas
yellow squash
potato
asparagus
mushrooms, quartered
1 1/2 cups veggie stock
3 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups cut chicken
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon dried thyme
sea salt, to taste
ground pepper, to taste
Pie Crust recipe, doubled

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop all the veggies and set aside. Make the pie crust up through the part where you put it in the fridge.

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet. Add the onion, carrots, potato and celery and cook over medium heat until softened but not browned, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

Add remaining butter to skillet and cook the rest of the veggies about 10 minutes.
Combine with vegetable mixture in skillet. Over medium high heat, stir the flour into skillet and cook for 1 minute. Add the stock slowly, while stirring, and bring to simmer. Stir until nicely thickened. Add the chicken pieces, cream and thyme and season with salt and pepper.

Take the pie crust out of the fridge and divide into 2 halves. Roll out one half and put in the bottom of a pie pan. With a slotted spoon, fill pie crust with filling. Pour in any remaining liquid until crust is almost filled to the top.

Roll out second pie crust and lay on top. Sealing edges with a fork and cut slits into the top of the pie. Bake for 30–40 minutes until pie crust is golden brown and filling is bubbling.

It was yummy. I'm still getting used to eating English peas and asparagus, so I didn't put that many in. But they were fresh, local, and organic from the farmer's market, and they tasted delicious. The pie crust was also one of my best.

Here's a close-up of the inside of the pie.