Chicken Pot Pie

Recipe: Chicken Pot Pie

So I’ve mentioned before my struggles with sometimes finding all of the ingredients I need for my meals. I still have yet to see Thai chiles or Thai basil in the Mid-Ohio Valley. But in grocery shopping for my chicken pot pie yesterday, I seemed to hit another ingredient brick wall. I found everything I needed for my recipe except for one thing. I went to four (yes four!) different grocery stores looking for one ingredient. Geez, you’re wondering. What exotic food does a chicken pot pie need that couldn’t be found in 4 different stores, and especially the beloved Giant Eagle? Well I’ll tell ya, it threw me for a loop. The thing I couldn’t find was…corn. 3 wonderful ears of corn-on-the-cob sent me driving from Marietta to Parkersburg and then to Belpre. I know, right? Now in mentioning this at work today, my coworkers told me it’s not corn season so of course I can’t find fresh corn. Duh! But the produce guy at Giant Eagle mentioned they had corn over the weekend and had just sold out. So clearly that means it should be available somewhere else. That’s what I get for assuming. Now I could’ve just saved myself the trouble at Giant Eagle and got a bag of frozen corn. But the recipe called for fresh kernels of corn and I’m trying really hard to stay as authentic to these recipes as possible. Having to substitute for Hungarian Paprika is one thing. But surely I could do the real deal with fresh corn. So off I went to Foodland (No luck), Wal-Mart (Sorry, try again), and Kroger (You have been denied). After talking to my coworkers I was seriously contemplating not cooking my meal, I was somewhat bummed out. Again, not sure at what point I should’ve seen the clear alternative of just using frozen corn, but for some reason I was really set on using fresh. Besides, I’ve never shucked an ear of corn so I thought it would be a cool experience. After going through this scenario with my good friend Liz on IM, and finally realizing how much dilemma I really was putting into a simple solution, I decided to stop at Wal-mart on the way home and just get the bag of frozen corn. (If you think this is drama, you should see me try to pick out a t-shirt for work in the morning). J Now, I will say for the pot pie I needed to either make a crust or buy a crust. I bought a ready-made crust at Giant Eagle on the off chance I was not successful making one. But after the disappointment of Frozen Corn 2010, I was determined I’d do something cool tonight. So in place of shucking corn, I made a pie crust. But more about that later…

Pot pies are such an awesome food. They are the ultimate comfort food. I liken pot pie to a warm hug from your very best friend. It just warms you up inside. I love eating a plate of pot pie and curling up to watch a show like Grey’s Anatomy or a sappy love movie. It just makes me happy. If you can’t tell, I’ve made/eaten pot pie before. But this recipe was definitely different than I’ve done before. I steamed my carrots, peas, and corn by placing them in a sieve and lowering them into boiling water until they were crisp. I’m not really sure what this technique is called, nor why it makes a difference to do it this way. But I felt cool doing it. J Believe it or not, the recipe called for wine. Seriously, if you don’t like to drink, Williams-Sonoma cookbooks may not be for you. This is my 7^th day cooking in my adventure and I’ve used alcohol in at least 3 separate adventures. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. 43% of my adventures have required me to take a trip to the liquor store. That’s a lot of alcohol there. I’ll be afraid to drive anywhere after dinner if this keeps up. I’m really joking. The alcohol burns off while cooking, so you don’t feel the affects when you eat the food. And I’ve mentioned this before, but real wine really gives the food a quality taste. I recognized the same taste in this pot pie recipe as the last recipe that used wine, the Linguine with Lobster Sauce. Now for my crust. I’m so proud of the crust I made. It turned out pretty well for my first time making a crust. Which is surprising now that I think of it that in all my years baking, I’ve never made a crust before? For some reason I guess I’ve always chickened out on going all in and making it myself. See, my cooking adventure is causing me to start to get a little bit brave now, huh? I used the food processor to mix my flour, sugar, salt, butter, and ice water. I had to do some crafty engineering in the beginning because when I started mixing the ingredients, flour started flying out of the open spout on the food processor. Flour flew everywhere, which intrigued my dog Lady to no end. The solution was pretty simple though, I just stuffed a towel in the spout. Every once in a blue moon, the degree actually does come in handy. Who knew? Actually getting flour everywhere while mixing just turned out to be a precursor to my experience of rolling the dough. Because after I floured the counter and rolling pin about 5 or 6 times to make sure my dough didn’t stick while I rolled it out, you couldn’t tell the difference from my first mess to this one. I’m pretty sure I know why my dog continues to hover around the kitchen while I cook…because of messes like this. But low and behold, my dough was successfully rolled out and placed on the pie dish. I was also able to separate the egg yolk I used to brush the pie crust before it baked without incident, which still reminds me of one of my last adventures. Seriously, please don’t drink and cook. And now I think I’m good on not using fresh corn in my recipe. The pie crust made up for it. But next time, I’m going to get my fresh corn dang it! J