Pot Pie Thursday

I have been busily crocheting for this weekend's benefit boutique that I have not had time for much else. Let alone cook a meal for my family. Luckily for them, and me, we are blessed to have my mom so near by. On Tuesday she brought us dinner and we had that for two days.

I did unravel my fingers from my yarn last night to cook. I don't know why I chose this week to try to make Chicken Pot Pie. I've never made it before but I have been craving it. I scoured the Internet for an easy recipe but none of them were appealing to me. I finally ended up with Emeril Lagasse's recipe. It didn't seem too hard.....Let's just say, I started making them at 4 p.m. and we were eating dinner at 8 p.m. I don't know why it took so long. I was really enjoying the process of making them and I was intentionally taking my time -maybe I was subconsciously trying to get a breather from Mr. Hook for a while. Nah, I love him too much!

Anywho, everything was coming along beautifully. The chicken was moist and delicious and the filling was perfect. I was so happy and excited until I got to making the crust. Pies are not my thing. I will bake cookies, cakes, scones, muffins all day long but when it comes to pies, I choke. No punt intended. I don't know what went wrong with my crust. When it came time to roll it out, it was too dry and it kept cracking. I must have not added enough shortening or water. I did the best I could to get the cracking, breaking crust onto my dishes. Then it wouldn't brown in the oven so I had to take them out and brush some milk over them. While I was brushing, I noticed that the crusts were a bit soggy. So I raised the temperature in the oven and I baked them for about 20 minutes more. When they finally came out of the oven, they were so hot (of course), we had to wait another 30 minutes before we could eat them. When we finally sat down to eat, the pie crust was surprisingly good, after all of that....but....the filling was very dry. I think all of that extra baking time dried them out. All of that aside, they were actually very tasty. Next time they will be perfect.

Here is the play-by-play. It is really a lot of fun to make these.

For the filling: Cooked chicken, blanched potatoes and carrots, sweet peas, and celery and onions.

Lots of butter. I think that's what makes this dish so yummy.

The celery and onion are cooked in the butter until they are soft.

Flour is added to make a blond roux.

Chicken stock and cream (half & half) are added. It was already smelling so good.

The veggies and chicken go in and get mixed well.

My first mistake was to wait until I made the filling to start the crust, forgetting that it needed to be refrigerated for at least 30 minutes before you can roll it out.

The recipe is for one large pie but I decided to make individual pies instead. Here are the bowls haphazardly lined with the bottom crusts.

The filling goes into the bowls.

The top crust goes on. Poke holes to let the steam escape.

Dry. Dry. Dry. But good. But dry.

So I was saying that I was getting ready for my benefit boutique. Since October is breast cancer awareness month, I decided to host a boutique party to donate a portion of the proceeds to breast cancer research in honor of my sister-in-law, Ederlen. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, at the age of 29. She is doing well and has a great team of doctors at Cedars Sinai, but it is alarming at how pervasive this disease is. Not only is it attacking women (and men) at a younger age, the rates are scary. We have to spread awareness and find a cure. So I decided to crochet accessories and sell them at the boutique to donate a portion of the proceeds for research. We will also have other vendors at the event. Please pray that it will be a successful event.

Before I go, I wanted to share one more thing. This beautiful pillow that my mom made out of an old sweater and some crocheted flowers. I can't wait to make one myself.


Happy Friday,
SC
xoxo