Chicken Pot Pie

This came about as quite a spontaneous thought for dinner yesterday... i've been meaning to make a pie for a while, I want to learn how to make pastry.
But the only thing holding me back was the lack of...

1) a rolling pin
2) baking beans
3) greaseproof paper
4) an actual pie dish.

"Minor details" I told myself.

Now, i know chicken pot pie is so very American but i loved the sound if it- nice cosy chicken and veg in a creamy sauce all in beautiful shortcrust pastry- oh yes, which i totally made myself!

So i did a bit of a rebellion.

I took this loverly recipe for the filling (adding in mushrooms also, looking back i would have opted for some leek too) and then took the shortcrust pastry recipe from Mary Berry's Great British Bake Off book.

Only later did i reach a slight dilemna..

Oh, and my housemate got a bit snap happy with the old camera- so once again, you'll get a horrifically in-depth view of, well, everything..

FIRST, i made the filling, as according to the pastry recipe, the filling should be cold. So i thought, whilst the filling cools- that's when i'd make the case.

Military operation- ingredient preparation

I'll tell you now that i got a bit confused by the filling recipe and ended up boiling my chicken in actual stock. So it had twice the chickeny flavour- amazing!!

Shredding the life out of this chicken breast

veg cooked (lovely steamy sweaty pic)

sauce made by rue method and adding the super chickeny chicken stock, rosemary, thyme and plenty of pepper.

So the pastry begins..

rubbing in the butter- trying to be careful not to warm it up too much..

Wait, are those, breadcrumbs?!!

Err... Yep! ^_^.. Super crumbly and short.

Rolling out the pastry after chilling... Student Stylie

Super proud that it managed to fit and look half-decent. 

Okay, so this is where it got a bit confusing.

Let me try to explain:

So this afternoon i was saying to Lizzie (the housemate) "I can't make a pie because you need to blind bake the base first, I think. And for this, i need greaseproof paper, which i've run out of, and baking beans which i don't have"

What i later found out, is that for Mary Berry's recipe for shortcrust pastry- it doesn't require blind baking at all!! Hooray!!

BUT.

The filling they used in the book looks super thick and hardly liquidy at all- and mine looks quite saucy.

Hence, if i don't do a blind bake, I was scared the pastry wouldn't cook/be horrifically soggy.

And noone, especially Mary Berry, likes a soggy bottom.

So, i came to the decision that i needed to do a blind bake... but with what?!!

..To cut a long story short, i used foil and rice. Hmm..

Damn student lyfff... 

I'll tell you now, that it did kind of work.

With a little help from Lizzie, We had to lay down the foil on the table, before tipping rice on it and then popping it (carefully) ontop of the pastry, to try and minimise foil stabbage.

Luckily, the pastry was safe and it survived a pretty impressive blind bake, just the bottom looked a little sweaty but besides that, pretty happy.

The only problem was that after my blind bake, I then put the filling in.

And then i put the pie top on.

OH! But what's this?!! The pie dish is hot! O_O

And my pastry pie top is err... melting...

Melting so fast that i couldn't make my pie pretty and crimp it :'((( And that was meant to be the fun part!

I also couldn't take a picture- i had to just shove it in the oven and hope for the soggy best.

To be honest i don't think this looks too bad for my first pie. The edges look black and burnt but i can reassure you it wasn't. Damn lying camera. I swear!

So the pastry shrunk, but the pastry all round was flakey, short and crumbly :)

The base I think, was definitely worth the blind bake, it was stable and crispy. It wasn't as crumbly though, but nonetheless it was edible :)

And that's always a plus.

I had my pie with rosemary and sage mash :) Omernomnom..

And if you're my boyfriend, you mash it all within an inch of its life. My poor poor pastry T_T

I think next time, I'll just do a pastry top and not a pastry case. The filling to pastry ratio was slightly lacking. But overall, a very tasty endeavor.