Ruby Tandoh’s favorite chicken pie

Ruby Tandoh’s favorite chicken pie is one of the recipes from Flavour , her superb second cookbook that includes a number of British dishes. A pie for six or six individual pies.  

• a sheet of frozen puff pastry, thawed
• a beaten egg
• 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 big sweet onions, like Vidalias, sliced into thin crescents
• about 6 oz chopped Irish or English unsmoked bacon ( see the Notes)
• 1 cup pale ale
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 lb skinned chicken thighs and drumsticks (or a lb of either)
• 3 Tablespoons flour (preferably Wondra)
• 6 oz heavy cream
• torn leaves from 2 heads of chicory
• salt and pepper

1. Melt the butter in a heavy pot just big enough to hold the chicken over medium low heat until soft, then increase the heat to medium high, add the bacon and cook it for 2-3 more minutes.
2. Add the ale, stock and chicken, bring the mix to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about ½ hour.
3. Take the chicken from its broth, turn off the heat, let the chicken cool then tear the meat from the bone.
4. Return the broth to medium heat, whisk the flour into the pot, and cook until the sauce thickens: It will not take long.
5. Turn off the heat and stir the cream into the sauce.

Preheat the oven to 400˚.

6. Add the chicken and chicory to the sauce, season the filling and let it cool.
7. Spoon the filling into the pie pan and top it with the pastry, crimping the edges to seal the pie. If you have a pie bird use it: Otherwise cut some slits in the pastry, then paint it with the egg wash.
8. Bake the pie until the crust is puffy and golden, usually in about 30 minutes.

Notes:

-Tandoh makes her own puff pastry but we are not that ambitious.

-The chicory is an imaginatively good gambit.