Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken pot pie is delicious. I like it a lot.

Ingredients

• unbaked pie crust
• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cubed
• 1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
• 1 cup frozen green peas (I just dumped the whole bag in since it was mostly empty)
• 1 cup sliced celery
• 1 quart water with 4 bullion cubes (or equivalent amount of better bullion) or 1 quart chicken broth
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour (I ended up using whole wheat flour since I ran out of all-purpose flour)
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
• 30 to 40 turns of the pepper mill's worth of black pepper
• 1 3/4 cups chicken broth
• 2/3 cup milk

Directions

1. Make (or buy) pie crust.
   
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
3. In a saucepan, combine chicken, carrots, peas, and celery. Add water/broth to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain (reserving cooking liquid) and set aside.
4. In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions and garlic in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly stir in 2 cups of the reserved chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.
5. Put pie crust in container the chicken will cook in.
6. Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust. Pour hot liquid mixture over. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

I used the Chicken Pot Pie IX recipe from allrecipes.com but adapted it according to the comments and my own eccentricities.

What I did . . .

I started off by making a pie crust according to the directions in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. But, I ran into a problem. I had plenty of whole wheat flour and bread flour but not the cup and two tablespoons of all-purpose flour the pie crust recipe called for. I ended up using as much all-purpose flour as I had and made up the difference with the whole wheat flour. When it came time to roll out the crust, I floured the surface using the whole wheat flour. It was not perfect. The crust kept sticking to the counter top and generally gave me a hard time. It ended up all right.

The pie crust in the dish that the pot pie is going to go in. The first time I made this, I pre-baked the pie crust and it shrunk so this time I wasn't worried about the fact that the pie crust wasn't making it all the way up the sides. Food should taste good not look pretty (or at least that's what I say because I am too lazy to make the food I make look pretty). Plus, I was really fed up with the crust so I just gave up on making it fit perfectly.

While letting the mixed up crust chill in the fridge, I cut up all the veggies and chicken and I put them in a sauce pan. (Along with 4 cubes of bullion and 4 cups of water since I did not want to use up my precious snow day chicken stock in this situation.)

I am incapable of getting this picture to rotate.

When that was done I let it sit (despite what the directions say about draining it right away.) Then got out half a stick of butter and a quarter cup of olive oil. I was lazy and thought it would be more convenient if I used the half stick of butter I had and used olive oil to make up the difference. Cutting two tablespoons off of a stick of butter is such hard work. I cooked the onions in the oil/butter mixture until the butter was melted and then I added the flour. I used whole wheat flour. It looks very brown. I let that cook for a bit. Then added the milk and I drained 2 cups of liquid off of the saucepan to add. It looked kind of yucky at this point.



Then I finished draining the liquid off the chicken (I saved it because it is stock-like) and I poured the chicken/veggie mixture into the pie crust encrusted dish. Then I poured the liquid filling over it and mixed it up a bit. Then I put the pie crust top on top and put it in the oven.

That pie crust was the most difficult thing I have ever worked with.
But I got my revenge, I ate it! And, it was good.

Then I put it in the oven. Set a timer for 45 min. and started cleaning up. Then the timer went off and I took it out and it looked lovely!