Recipe: Chicken Pot Pie

My grandmother's recipe book described how to prepare a farmyard chicken before making the pie. I have seen it done but I chose to start with a pack of lean chicken breasts from the supermarket instead.

Chicken pot pie is baked inside an ovenproof procelain dish. The dish is filled with a cooked, moist chicken stew topped with a layer of puff pastry. This recipe provides a complete meal; you won't be feeling hungry if this is all that appears on your plate - I promise you. Nonetheless, as often happens on this blog, we have included a bonus recipe for using up the remainder of your puff pastry. Whether you prepare it from scratch, or use ready made frozen puff pastry, there is always some left over. So, in the unlikely event that the chicken pot pie doesn't leave you feeling completely full, the bonus recipe of Spiced Apple Pastry will certainly finish the job.

Ingredients

• Half a kilo of lean chicken breasts
• 2 large carrots
• 1 small onion
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 small egg
• 1/2 cup of milk
• Seasoning
• Puff pastry

Preparation

• Dice the chicken and gently fry until the outside surfaces are cooked
• Finely chop and fry a small onion
• Chop and boil the carrots until just tender
• Stir the flour into the onions and gently add the milk, stirring to keep smooth and free of lumps
• Stir the onion sauce and carrots into the chicken and simmer for half an hour, adding more milk if needed to keep the mixture moist but not runny
• Pour the stewed chicken into an oven-proof porcelain dish
• Roll out the puff pastry and cut enough to cover the dish
• Whisk the egg and brush it over the surface of the pastry
  
• Bake at 350degF until the pastry rises and turns golden
• Serve immediately

John's Notes The quantities given in this recipe will actually make two generous individual pot pies. It is best to serve the pie in the dish in which it is baked. That is the way it would be served in an English pub at lunchtime.

Bonus: There will inevitably be some leftover pastry so try this dessert. Finely chop one Granny Smith apple, mix with some raisins, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Roll out the scraps of puff pastry into a circle. Wrap the pastry around the apple mixture and squeeze tightly into a baseball shape. Splash a little egg wash over it and put it in the oven with the chicken pot pie and bake until it turns golden. Serve with a dollop of cream. Then lay down and complain about feeling bloated!

How to Make Great British Bread Pudding

Bread pudding is one of those fabulous stomach fillers that characterize the Great British dessert. It is not quite as filling as the Banoffee Pie that we featured a few weeks ago on this blog. I can finish a plate of bread pudding but the victorious Banoffee Pie stood over my exhausted body and laughed.

My mother was taught how to make bread pudding by my grandmother. I learned how to make it from my mother. But the bread pudding I grew up with is fundamentally different to the popular recipes used by modern cooks.

The bread pudding I ate as a child was made with a copious quantity of beef suet. The fat literally dripped from the fork.

Bread pudding can be made in two ways. One way uses suet. I made it with Atora Light Vegetable Suet which contains 30% less fat than regular beef suet. A healthier alternative is to substitute the suet with eggs. I made that too.

Just for good measure I made a third variety - Bread & Butter pudding. We are going to get fat in my household this week.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf white bread
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg
• 1/4 cup sugar

and either:

• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup milk

or:

• 1/2 cup Atora Light Vegetable Suet

Preparation

• Cut the bread into small squares and add enough warm water to thoroughly moisten the bread
• Knead the bread and water into a smooth mush then drain off as much water as possible
• Mix the raisins into the mushy bread then stir in 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg plus the sugar

Either:

• Mix in the Atora suet

or:

• Whisk the eggs and milk together and add to the mix

Then:

• Put the pudding into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 degF until the top begins to darken
• Allow to cool then turn out of the pan and cut into slices for serving

John's Notes
I enjoyed both varieties of bread pudding. For my health's sake I'll probably only make the egg variety in future. But here's a bonus:

Bread and Butter Pudding Bonus

Thickly butter 3 or 4 slices of bread. Cut the slices into quarters and layer in a baking dish with raisins. The top layer must be bread. Pour on a whisked mixture of 1 cup of milk, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a teaspoon of nutmeg. Bake at 350degF until the top layer of bread browns.

Recipe: Mulligatawny Soup

I call this one "The Forbidden Soup". Canadian government officials consider it so dangerous that it is illegal to import it from Britain.

I bet you are wondering what could be so dangerous about a soup that Canada would ban it. Well the dangerous ingredient is chicken stock. All meat products from the UK are banned in Canada because the Canadian Fool Inspection Agency (CFIA) is afraid that Canadian Mad Cow Disease might become contaminated by British Mad Cow Disease.

Ok, I'll dismount from my soapbox now and talk about food instead. Mulligatawny is a traditional British curry soup. If you like curry and you haven't tried Mulligatawny before, now is the time to try it out. It is very easy to make and quite delicious.

Ingredients

• 1 large onion
• 1 large apple
• 1 large tomato
• 1 litre Knorr chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon chutney
• 1/2 cup cooked lentils
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 tablespoon McDougall's Flour
• Salt, pepper

Preparation

• Chop the onion, apple and tomato and fry until the onion is golden.
• Stir in the flour, chutney and curry powder
• Add the stock gradually, stirring to make a smooth paste
• Add the lentils and cook over a low heat for at least an hour
• Season with salt and pepper to taste

John's Notes
I curried favour with the boss of the house with this one [who threw that shoe?]. I read several recipes before deciding which ingredients to use for my Mulligatawny. My trusty Grandmother's recipe book from the 1950s suggested using coconut but left out the lentils.

I didn't have any coconut in my kitchen cabinet anyway, but I recall eating Mulligatawny for the first time in a restaurant in England many years ago. My recollection is that it definitely had lentils in it.

The flavour of the soup will be influenced by your choice of chutney. I recommend one of the fine selection of Patak Indian pickles or Shaw's chutneys available at Blighty's Tuck Store (what a surprise).

If you want to adjust the ingredients slightly, go ahead, be creative. For example, add a little finely chopped chicken to the soup. And don't forget to wear rubber gloves and a biological protection suit if you use imported Knorr chicken stock cubes [get off that soapbox John!!] ...

PS: Can you spot the English style soup spoon in the picture? It's hard to find spoons like these in Canada.

How to Make Steak & Kidney Pudding

I have a dream. I have a dream that, one day, I will find a good source of Steak & Kidney Puddings in Canada.

Until that day arrives I will just have to make my own. And that is just what I did today. It's quite a challenge to sit at the keyboard writing this post with a huge steak pud inside me.

Home-made puddings tend to be heavy. Heavier than the type of pudding you buy at a "chippie" in the north of England.

So, if you want one of those "come hungry" type of meals then have I got a recipe for you.

Ingredients

• 1 pack Atora Light Vegetable Suet
• 1/2 Kg McDougall's Self-Raising Flour
• 1/2 Kg boneless stewing steak
• Small amount of chopped kidney
• 1 Oxo cube
• Salt, pepper

Preparation

• Rub the flour and suet together until the texture is smooth
• Add 1 cup of water and mix thoroughly
• Roll the dough on a floured board to make circles about 15cm in diameter
• Press some aluminum foil into a small dessert bowl with a broad overlapping fringe
• Press the rolled dough into the bowl on top of the foil
• Brown the steak in a little oil in a frying pan then throw in a pinch of flour, a crumbled Oxo cube and a couple of tablespoons of water. Stir to make a gravy
• Put the meat and gravy inside the dough and wrap the dough tightly around the meat.
• Wrap the foil tightly around the dough and remove from the dessert bowl
  
• Place the pudding into a large pan of gently boiling water and simmer for 2 hours. Keep the pudding half-immersed in the water and top up with water from a kettle as necessary
  
• Serve with more gravy and Batchelor's mushy peas

John's Notes
Instead of aluminum foil you could use the more traditional method of wrapping the pudding in cloth to make a "rag pudding".

I tried in vain to find a "pudding bowl" in my local stores. Pudding bowls are deep with steeply sloping sides and make an excellent mould for a pudding. If you have a pudding bowl you can line the walls with dough, add the meat then make a flat dough lid for the pudding. Seal the top of the bowl with foil and put the bowl into the boiling water to cook.

If you are not a fan of kidney you can substitute onion or mushrooms - or even just make a plain old steak pudding.

How to Make Pease Pudding

Pease pudding is a delicious, nutritious, easy-to-digest food and it is also very simple to make.

Let me first say something that is on my mind. I often wonder why I am publishing these recipes. You see, I sell cans of Foremost brand pease pudding at Blighty's Tuck Store.

If I carry on telling folks how to make Great British food from scratch am I going to kill all my sales at the store?

For that reason, if I ever find a recipe for British Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate I will never, never publish it or I'll definitely go out of business!

Ingredients

• 1 large chopped onion
• 1 kg dried yellow peas
• 3 Knorr ham stock cubes
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Salt, pepper, garlic

Preparation

• Put the dried peas in a large stock pot, cover with water
• Boil for 30 minutes then leave to stand for at least an hour then drain off all the water
• Cover the peas with just enough ham stock (prepare from scratch, or use Knorr ham stock cubes) to cover the peas, then add a little more so that there is about a couple of centimeters of liquid above the peas
• Add the chopped onion and seasonings
• Boil until the peas are quite soft
• Strain the cooked peas into a mixing bowl and set the remaining liquid to one side (do not discard)
• Add the butter and blend until the peas form a paste. Leave a little texture in the mix - it will taste better.
• Serve with ham, Heinz Piccalilli and your choice of vegetable

John's Notes
This recipe turned out very well. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and I enjoyed a really nice dinner. Well actually I probably made too much pease pudding because we ate the rest the next day too and still had some left over.

There is a side bonus to this recipe. During the preparation we set aside some of the stock used to boil the peas. Take this leftover stock (which now has a very high pea content), stir in some milk and finely chopped ham and warm gently for a splendid ham and pea soup.

But wait, there is a second bonus! If you have as much leftover pease pudding as I did, blend it with some milk and a little more ham stock for even more soup.

Comment from John's evil twin: Make life easy; don't use this recipe. Go to Blighty's Tuck Store and buy a can of pease pudding instead.