A Chicken Pot Pie for Mark

As I mentioned in the beef pot pie post from a few weeks ago, Mark has been craving a chicken pot pie for a while now.  A long while.  I thought that beef pot pie with the cheddar biscuits would scratch that itch, but it only made his chicken pot pie cravings worse.

So I turned to Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home to try out his chicken pot pie recipe.  This book has yet to let us down, and this was no exception.

One thing you should know about this recipe, like a lot of recipes from Ad Hoc -- expect to use nearly every pot and pan you own and don't expect it to be quick. 

Here's what you'll need:

Basic Pie Crust 

Filling:

1 cup 1/2-inch pieces red-skinned potatoes (I used regular Idaho taters since we have an enormous bag at home that is not getting any younger)

1 1/4 cups 1/2-inch pieces carrots (cut on the diagonal)

12 white pearl onions

3 bay leaves

3 thyme sprigs

24 black peppercorns

1 1/4 cups 1/2-inch pieces of celery (cut on the diagonal)

2 cups shredded cooked chicken  (I boiled my chicken with herbs for this, but if you have leftover roasted chicken on hand, that would be incredible in this recipe.)

Bechamel:

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 cups whole milk

1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped thyme

Pinch of cayenne

1 egg, beaten

Make your pie crust and get that in the fridge.  Meanwhile, chop your veggies.  Mine looked like so (minus the celery):

In three separate sauce pans (this is the start of Thomas going through every pot you own) cover the veggies with water, add one bay leaf, eight peppercorns (really Thomas?  not nine? not seven?), and one spring of fresh thyme to each pot.  Boil until just tender.  

As you get those softened up, boil yet another saucepan with water for blanching the celery.  Blanche for one to two minutes and then drain and add to an ice bath to stop the cooking.  This also helps keep your celery nice and bright green.  Very pretty.

At this point I transferred all the veggies to a cooking sheet to wait while I made the bechamel.

In a medium sauce, add three tablespoons of butter.  Once melted, add three tablespoons of flour and whisk constantly for two to three minutes.  Then slowly pour in your three cups of milk while whisking.  Lower heat so this stays at a simmer and let it reduce to about two cups, which takes about 30 minutes, even after accidentally turning the burner off for a few minutes...

In between whisking the bechamel, I took the bottom pie crust dough out of the fridge.  It had been chilling for about an hour.  I rolled it out and fit it into the bottom of my pie pan:

Mark scattered the veggies and chicken on top:

 At this point the sauce was thickened and I strained it through a fine-mesh strainer.  I seasoned it with chopped parsley, thyme, a pinch of cayenne and salt and pepper before pouring it on top of the pie filling.

Next, on with the top pie crust:

I brushed it with a beaten egg and made a steam vent, which was an "M" so there was no confusion whose pie this was:

We popped it in the oven for 50 minutes and dug in:

Mark declared it the best pot pie he's ever had.  I would have to agree!

My Clandestino Valentine

Mark and I were planning a low-key, special dinner at home to celebrate Valentine's Day this year when a few weeks ago I got Clandestino Chicago's email about February underground dinners.  These dinners are not cheap, but seemed like an interesting way to celebrate Valentine's Day, so we bought our tickets to the Pilsen Clandestino dinner.

We had no idea what to expect -- location, size, food?  The day before our dinner we got the details on the location -- the New Arts Club Building just off 18th in Pilsen.  Turns out the building was one of the treats of the night.  It was built in 1906, as it current owner and resident shared before dinner.  It was unusual, according to him, because of its beaux-arts exterior and arts and crafts style interior.  I don't know much about that, but we were immediately impressed with the old woodwork and other preserved details throughout the house.

The building had numerous iterations, including a social club (from what I could gather) for Slovenian immigrants around the turn of the century.  The room we had our cocktail hour in was the old billiards room, an exposed-brick room towards the back of the house was the old gym, and the room where we ate was a small ballroom.  More recently, the building was a book store and the old stock of books is now stored in the former gym.

Here is a pretty poor picture of the second-floor ballroom where we ate:

The menu of the night combined flavors from the history of Pilsen and called itself Bohemian-Mexican fusion, although I found it leaned more heavily on the Mexican.  You can find more details of our menu on the Clandestino site (and I don't feel like repeating that word-for-word here), but I will share our favorite course: lobster dumplings, lobster mushroom consomme and brown butter:

All the ingredients were extremely fresh -- I believe the chef mentioned the mushrooms in the picture above were picked the day before we ate them.  Overall, I'd have to the food a solid "B" -- very good, but not great.  The entire experience, however, gets an "A."  Sign up for their emails if you want to check out a future event.  We might.

Beef & Veggie Pot Pie with Cheddar Biscuit Topping

Yes, it's true, this winter in Chicago has been pretty brutal.  Last week we were stuck in the house for two days while we dug out from the blizzard.  Today the high temperature is in the single digits and I don't even want to look at the low for tonight.  Alas, it is a good excuse to make some comfort foods, if we're trying to find a bright side here.

A few weeks ago we made this beef and vegetable pot pie from Food & Wine.  It wasn't quite the chicken pot pie Mark has been asking me to make for him, but no one complained with the finished product. You can make that version if you want to eat pot pie for two weeks (which you may), or you could go with our modified version, which is also a little lighter since all this comfort food is making my jeans snug:


Beef & Veggie Pot Pie with Cheddar Biscuits (adapted from F&W)

3/4 of a stick of butter, cubed & chilled
1/2 a large onion, coarsely chopped
About 3/4 pound of carrots, chopped
About 3/4 pound of parsnips, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 pounds beef (I used extra lean here and it worked fine since it's not the main player in this recipe)
1/2 T thyme
2 1/8 cups flour
About 2 3/4 cup milk (we only had skim at hand and it worked fine)
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 bag frozen peas
3/4 cup sharp cheddar (we used an English Coastal Cheddar I picked up at Trader Joe's and it was awesome all around)


Heat oven to 350


Put the oven racks with the top one in the upper third and the bottom one in the lower third.  This recipe tells you to put a pan to catch the drippings on the bottom rack, but I put our casserole dish right on a pan covered in aluminum.  Do not skip that step unless you enjoy cleaning your oven.  

In a large pot, heat some olive oil and saute the onions, carrots and parsnips until tender.  Season with salt and pepper as you go.  Add the beef and thyme and cook until browned. Stir in 1/8 cup flour and cook for a few minutes.  Stir in 1 1/2 cups milk and your stock and simmer until it thickens.  Stir in the peas and season with salt and pepper again.  Pour into a 9x13 baking dish.
Time for the biscuits.  Mix 2 cups flour with the cubed 3/4 cup of butter.  I used a pastry cutter.  When it gets a sandy texture, stir in the shredded cheddar.  Add a little more than a cup of milk until a smooth dough forms.

I used an ice cream scooper to scoop balls of the dough onto the beef mixture.  Bake for 40 minutes and then broil for another minute to brown the biscuits.  This ended up delicious with a really nice thyme flavor. With how well this turned out, Mark's chicken pot pie may be next.