It has been a month since I’ve last eaten pasta, mainly because I’m trying really hard to reduce the size of my fabulous (motherly as my ex called them) hips. The road to not eating pasta has not always been easy. I have had my great days where I haven’t given my lovely friend pasta a thought but at times it can also be torture, where all I want to do is stuff my face with a big bowl of creamy pasta. I do still eat comfort food and putting something together might take some more planning but I’m hoping that it will all be worth it in the end…please tell me it will be.
I love stews and pies but have never had the courage to actually made one, but that all recently changed. In the past my friend Shannon has made a chicken pot pie recipe that can knock anybody’s socks off. She kindly sent me the link and before I could blink, I was in the kitchen cooking a storm away. This is one of Barefoot Contessa’s recipes and if you’ve heard of her, you’ll know that a tub of butter will get you anywhere.This is fabulous recipe but it is not one that you can put together in twenty minutes. I’m sure there are ways you can cheat and eventually I will figure them out because I’ll be making this again but making this the first time nearly took me nearly 40ish minutes. The ingredients are as follows:
3 whole chicken breasts 2 tablespoons olive oil
5 cups chicken stock 1 chicken bouillon cube
12 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 cups chopped yellow onions
¾ cup flour¼ cup heavy cream 2 cups frozen peas
½ cup minced fresh parsley Salt and pepper
4 medium sized carrots, diced and blanched for 2 minutes
Before I go on, I should probably mention that there is also a list of ingredients for how to make the pie crust but I cheated and bought puff pastry which I used instead of laboring in the kitchen for hours.I took the chicken breasts and rubbed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them in the oven for approximately 34 minutes. I then cut up the chicken into small cubes but mine weren’t that small and I have decided that next time I’m going to shred the chicken.
In a small pot, I heated chicken stock and one bouillon cube and left that to simmer for about twenty minutes. In a large pot (do use a large one and not a medium one like I did, it will make stirring so much easier and you won’t have to share your food with the stove either) I melted the butter and sautéed the onions for about 10 minutes until they were translucent. I then added the flour, stirring constantly (and I mean constantly) and slowly added the hot chicken stock to the sauce. The recipe indicates to leave this to simmer for about a minute until it thickens but I stirred mine all the way. The last part was the easiest, I simply seasoned the sauce, added the heavy cream, chicken, carrots and peas and hello I had a wonderful pot of chicken stew. I then took the puff pastry and baked it in the oven for about 10/15 minutes and when I dished it up, I simply tore off a piece and put it on top of the stew.
I am so proud of myself, this chicken pie dish is AMAZING and I’ll be making it again. The only negative aspect was that the stew was a bit thick but the taste was oh so good. This is a keeper, definitely worth making especially on a cold winter’s day.
