Pot Pie w/ Biscuits
The ingredients, especially the vegetables, are not fixed quantities - use however much or however little you have of each of them. I would only recommend getting a good amount of onions and celery in at least, it forms the base of the flavour. I was surprised by the celery, i don't like celery the least bit but they cook down and mellow into the sauce.
I made both chicken and vegetable pot pie with the same base recipe. Read on to find out how it was done!
Ingredients
Pot Pie
2kg boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces (*Skip if making it vegetarian)
800g mushrooms, sliced thickly
3 onions, small dice
3 or 4 carrots, small dice
4 stalks celery, small dice
500g potatoes, small dice
2 leeks, thinly sliced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup of flour
1.2 litres of chicken stock (at least 1L, then eyeball the amount you need depending on how saucy you like it) (*Skip if making it vegetarian)
Fresh thyme leaves (even without much, the flavour is still good)
Cream (optional)
Salt & Pepper
Butter
Biscuits
2 cups of plain flour
3tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
40g shortening
15g butter
3/4 cup of butter milk (or just 1 cup of milk with 1tbsp vinegar) *The original recipe called for 1 cup but i found 3/4 cup to be enough, so pour in the milk slowly and stop when the dough comes together
Egg wash (egg with water or cream)
Directions
Prepare a large frying pan and a large pot.
In the frying pan, brown the pieces of chicken thigh in batches with salt and pepper. Don't overcrowd the pan. It's ok if the chicken pieces do not get fully cooked, they will later.
In the large pot, melt butter and fry the mushrooms. There's a lot of mushrooms, so there will be a lot of liquid - which is great.
**When all the mushrooms have softened, scoop out the liquid - reserve it to be used as stock for the vegetable pot pie.
Add in the onions and fry till they darken and start caramelizing. It will take time because of the sheer volume, just be patient.
Then add in the garlic, carrot, leeks, celery and potatoes. Fry for a few minutes. Add in the thyme.
Add in the flour, coat and stir till you don't see anymore white flour.
**At this stage, depending on how much of your guests are vegetarians, transfer some into a smaller pot.
Add in the chicken stock to the big pot.
**For the vegetarian version, add in the mushroom liquid we've reserved from before and top up with water.
Cook for 35 mins till the potatoes are tender.
Preheat the oven to 200 degree celsius and we can start making the biscuits.
I've learnt that this is very forgiving, my butter and shortening was not real cold and melted but it still turned out fine - maybe not if you were baking biscuits to be eaten on its own, but in a pot pie it worked out well.
In a bowl, place the flour, baking powder and salt together.
Add in the butter and shortening. Using your fingers, mix the flour and butter/shortening till it forms fine crumbs.
Slowly pour the milk into the dry ingredients - make sure to not pour it all in at once.
Turn the dough onto lightly floured surface and roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut the dough with a metal round cutter and set aside in the fridge if your pot pie is not ready yet.
When the pot pie filling is ready, place into an ovenproof dish and place the biscuits on top, keeping it away from the edge of the pan and from each other. Brush the tops with an egg wash or just melted butter. I added a little crushed black pepper on top.
Vegetable Pot Pie
Chicken Pot Pie
Bake in the oven for 15 mins, till the biscuits are nicely browned.
Vegetable Pot Pie
Chicken Pot Pie
SERVE!