Recipe: Chicken and Mushroom/Sweetcorn Pie

Some years ago I wanted to make a chicken pie and so I searched the internet until I found a recipe I vaguely like. I changed it to suit myself and here's what I came up with:

2 breasts of chicken (roughly one per person)
half a tub of mushrooms
garlic
chicken stock - I tend to make up one cube of the knorr ones
butter
plain flour
double cream
lemon juice
ready rolled puff pastry

Yes I know those quantities are a bit vague, but so is this recipe - I tend to make it up as I go along!

First I shove the chicken in the oven to cook - literally I just shove it on some tin foil and leave it for 20 minutes or however long it takes. Some people use the leftover meat from a roast, but when I roast a chicken there doesn't seem to be much left for anything else and I still haven't mastered the art of making my own stock.

To make the sauce:

Melt a knob of butter in a pan. Stir in a handful of flour until it makes a thick sauce. Still keeping it over the heat, start pouring in stock while stirring. The instant you add the liquid, the 'sauce' will try to solidify so you need to add about a third to a half of the jug to prevent it from becoming a big lumpy mess. Keep it nice and hot and add either more stock or more flour until you get the consistency you require - remember that every time you add a bit of flour you need to let it heat up to 'cook' into the sauce and give it a chance to thicken the sauce.

When you are happy with the thickness of the sauce, add a nice healthy dollop of double cream and the juice of half a lemon (I sometimes use lemon juice from a bottle, but it tastes much nicer if you use real lemon). Now for the tasty bit - try your sauce and add either lemon or cream to make it as yummy as you can (they sort of cancel each other out so if it's too lemony add more cream and if it's too creamy add more lemon!).

When I make this pie with mushrooms, I slice them and fry them in garlic and butter then mix that into the sauce. Meanwhile, the chicken should have cooked so you need to pull it apart using a couple of forks (and a lot of patience) and chuck that in too.

Pour the whole filling into a lasagne dish and put some pastry on top - cut a couple of air holes (triangles with sides about 1cm) and then stab it a few times with a fork. Finally, if you're feeling fancy, glaze the pastry with milk or beaten eggs. Whack it in the oven at 180 and cook for about 25 minutes or until it's golden on top.

Serve with mash and beans!!!

Unfortunately, He refuses to go anywhere near mushrooms so more often than not I make this pie with a tin of sweetcorn instead of mushrooms and it's just as nice. I've also got a flatmate who won't eat anything containing chicken stock and I can assure you it tastes just as tasty using vegetable stock.

Yummmmmmy!