Chicken Pot PIe

Here's the second chicken dish from our last class. It's a very simple chicken stew, served up on a crispy pillow of puff pastry. Puff pastry is one of our favorite prepared foods. Check out these recipes for samosas and a spinach and cheese appetizer that we posted previously. They are two great ways to use up any extra puff pastry.

Chicken Pot Pie
(serves 4, cost is $9.50)

3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
3 cups chicken stock
3 medium carrots, cut into 1" pieces
2 stalks celery, into 1" pieces
1 medium onion, cut into chunks
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 pound chicken, cooked and shredded
½ cup frozen peas, thawed
¼  - ½ teaspoon salt
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed (see Note)

Melt butter in a large covered saucepan. Stir in flour and cook for a few minutes over medium heat until mixture is a light golden. Whisk in chicken stock, and whisk for another minute to make sure there are no lumps. Add onion, carrots, celery, thyme, bay leaf, and pepper. Stir well. Bring to boil and reduce heat to medium-low to maintain a simmer and cover. Cook until carrots are tender, about 20 minutes. Add shredded chicken and peas and cook for another 5 minutes. Taste for salt. You may not need to add any depending on the saltiness of the stock and your own salt tolerance.

While stew is cooking, preheat oven to 400℉. Unfold puff pastry and cut into 4 squares. Place on a baking sheet making sure they aren't touching. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and puffed up. This step can be done up to a few hours ahead. Store the baked puffed pastry squares at room temperature.

To serve, place the puff pastry in a large soup bowl, break a hole in the pastry and ladle on the chicken stew.

Note: A package of frozen puff pastry contains two sheets of puff pastry. They come apart easily while still frozen. Separate the two sheets. Wrap one sheet well in plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight to thaw. For this recipe, you can even thaw it for 30 minutes at room temperature, but this method isn't recommended for most puff pastry recipes. The pastry gets too soft to work very quickly. Since we are just unfolding it and cutting it up, the quick thaw works just fine.

Wrap the other sheet well and return to the freezer. Or thaw that one too and make one of our other delicious recipes that use puff pastry.