#50: Chicken Pot Pie
My 50th post felt like it merited something special. And by special I mean something time-consuming (but worth it). A project, if you will. A very delicious project. Many comfort foods could be tossed into the category of time-worthy projects: cheesecake, beef bourguignon, lasagna, but none of them is held in such high regard in my heart as chicken pot pie.
Now, chicken pot pie is one of those dishes that people expect to be a certain way in order to conform to their idea of perfect pot pie. For some people this means a full-monty double-crust situation (which, by the way, is not happening here – I will do a lot of things with pastry, but I will NOT encase hot gravy in it - consider me once burned, twice shy). For others, this means a flaky lid of golden puff pastry. Then there’s the weirdos (me!) who actually want to be eating a cross between chicken & dumplings and pot pie so therefore favour a biscuit-topped situation. Wherever your proclivities lead you, I got you covered here today (unless you’re one of those aforementioned double-crust kind of people, in which case, I can’t do nothing for you son – please ignore the double negative and just imagine it being said like Jeff Bridges in True Grit).
On the docket today, I lay before you three pot pie projects, each with varying levels of commitment. The quick and dirty option would be the puff pastry situation, BA’s entry for best pot pie, made all the more expedient through the use of store-bought rotisserie chicken. Your more time-consuming – yet still pastry-based – option would be Chicken Not Pie, a glorious reinterpretation of Chrissy Teigen’s brilliant creation involving pot pie stew with pie crust crackers on the side. Finally, my personal preference (and the most “project-like” one of them all – BUT SO WORTH IT I PROMISE), the biscuit-topped pot pie, which comes complete with homemade stock and fluffy buttermilk biscuits. I can absolutely swear to you that none of these recipes will lead you astray, but it is up to you to determine your own personal preferences from here on out.
