Chicken, Bacon and Leek Pie

Ok, so I'm about a week too late with this recipe as Pie Week was last week.  Oh well, if I had it my way every week would be pie week! A dinner that includes some sort of pie is pretty much perfect in my book - flavoursome pie, smooth creamy mash and a few veg on the side - I feel hungry just writing about it.

This particular pie became one of my new favourites when I was sent Innocent's cookbook Hungry? The innocent recipe book for filling your family with good stuff to review last year.  It's so simple but oh so delicious and always a hit whenever I make it.  It also works really well with leftover cooked ham in place of the bacon.  

Chicken, Bacon & Leek Pie
(from Hungry, by the Innocent Smoothie People)

olive oil
2 leeks, trimmed, washed and roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
8 chicken thighs, skinned, boned and chopped into bite-sized pieces
4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, roughly chopped
1/2 a small butternut squash, deseeded, peeled and cut into small chunks (I haven't tried it with this yet)
a few springs of thyme
2 tablespoons plain
200ml chicken stock
1 x 500g packet of puff pastry
1 large free-range egg
a splash of milk

1) Preheat your oven to 190c/375f/gas mark 5.

2) Fry the leeks and garlic in a little olive oil over a medium heat for 10-15 minutes.  Remove from the pan and set aside, then put the pan back on the heat.

3) Add a little more oil to the pan and add the chicken and bacon and cook until the chicken starts to brown, then add the leeks, squash (if using), thyme and flour and stir for a few more minutes. Then add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes.

4) Meanwhile, roll out the pastry on a clean work surface dusted with flour until about 5mm thick and big enough to fit over your pie dish.  Beat the egg and milk together and use some of it to brush the edge of the pie dish. Tip the filling into the dish then lay the pastry on top.

5) Use a fork to press the edges of the pastry to the side of the dish, then trim of any excess round the edge.  Brush the top of your pie with the egg and milk and add any decoration that you might want to make with the left over pastry (ensuring that this is brushed with egg and milk too).  Make one or two small holes in the top of the pie to allow any air to escape.

6) Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.  Serve with mash and veg of your choice.

You can also make the pie up to the stage just before you brush with egg, then allow to cool completely before freezing.  It will keep for a few months.

Serves 4

Vegetable Enchilladas

Oh dear, poor neglected blog. I can't believe it's almost a month since my last post. I've been stuck in a bit of a cooking rut of late but I've had a good rifle through some of my cookbooks and earmarked a few ideas to help me rediscover my cooking mojo.

This recipe is one of my stock recipes and is a great way of fitting in a few of your five-a-day without too much trouble. It's another one of those recipes-that's-hardly-a-recipe but worthy of mention nonetheless. It's very straigtforward to assemble and you can adapt it to whatever you have in the fridge or garden. What I've listed below is my standard recipe but you could add anything you like...courgettes, peas etc.

Vegetable Enchilladas

(origin unknown)

1-2 red or yellow peppers

1-2 leeks

1-2 cloves of garlic

Handful of mushrooms

1/2 - 1 cup of sweetcorn, tinned or frozen

Large handful of spinach

6-8 tortillas

Jar of Tomato & Chargrilled Veg Pasta sauce

Grated cheese

1) Preheat the oven to 180c

2) Slice or chop up the veg into bite sized pieces. Heat a splash of olive oil in a large frying pan and add the veg. Cook, stirring regularly, until softened.

3) Pile a spoonful of veg onto a one of the tortillas and fold up (I put the veg on the top half, fold up the bottom of the tortilla then fold in the sides). Place the parcel in a large baking dish and repeat until all the vegetables are used up (6 tortillas are usually enough to fill my large oval baking dish).

4) Spoon the pasta sauce over the top of the tortillas and top with grated cheese. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbling.

Serves 2-3

Another Creme Fraiche recipe!

I had finished with my little creme fraiche project for the time being but then I came across this recipe in May's delicious magazine which I thought looked interesting.  It's called Roasted Chicken and Leek Fusilli Pie and, instead of mixing the pasta with the sauce, you just put it on top of the chicken and veg mixture, a bit like a pie crust I suppose, drizzle with olive oil and then bake it in the oven   I was bit concerned that the pasta would go really crunchy like the edge of a lasagne that hasn't quite been covered by sauce.  

As it turned out the pasta didn't go crunchy, apart from a few bits around the edge, although I did think it was a bit chewy.  Overall I thought it was a pretty nice dish, but not outstanding.  There was quite a lot preparation involved with chopping all the veg and chicken (the recipe states 15 minutes prep time but I'm sure it took me longer that that) although once that was done it was all pretty straightforward.  Also, you couldn't then just put it in the oven and leave it as the veg had to be roasted, then the pasta added and then the cheese put on the top for the last five minutes.  While it was nice, it was quite nice enough to justify all the effort and to be honest I'm not sure it's one I'll be making again in the future.

Here's the recipe...

Roasted Chicken and Leek Fusilli Pie

(adapted from delicious magazine, May 2009)

2 tbsp olive oil

8 large skinless chicken thigh fillets, cubed

2 red potatoes, diced

1 red onion, thickly sliced

2 leeks, washed and thickly sliced

3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

1 bay leaf

2 tbsp plain flour

250g fusilli or other pasta shape

100g frozen peas

150ml chicken stock, hot

200g creme fraiche

75g grated fontina or gruyere

1) Preheat the oven to 109c/gas 5.  Heat 1 tbsp o

il in a 1.2 litre ovenproof dish.  Stir in the chicken, potatoes, onion, leek, garlic, bay leaf, flour and some seasoning.  Roast in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden, stirring once or twice.

2) Meanwhile, cook the pasta until just about done but still firm in the centre, then drain well.

3) Stir the peas, stock and creme fraiche into the chicken mixture, then top with the pasta.  Drizzle over the remaining olive oil, then bake for a further 20 minutes.  Scatter over the cheese and return to the oven for 5 minutes until bubbling and golden.

This dish was included the magazine's "freeze ahead" section.  If you want to freeze the dish, cool it completely before wrapping in cling film and foil and storing it in the freezer for up to two months.  Defrost thoroughly before reheating at 190c/gas 5 for 25 minutes until piping hot.  Cover with kitchen foil if it's browning too much.