Ingredients
A picked
chicken carcass or a poached chicken breast chopped into bits.
A can of chicken
in white sauce
Some frozen
petit pois
Frozen sheet
puff pastry (you can use blocks)
milk or egg
for glazing the pastry
optional:
some cochineal and annat or green food colouring
Method
I start by
picking all the remaining meat from the carcass.
Put the chicken
into a saucepan with the frozen peas and a little milk and just warm it
through.
We need to
thin down the sauce a touch because it will rethicken in the oven anyway.
Season the
mixture to your taste a touch of nutmeg and possibly a little bit of Dijon
mustard along with the usual salt and fresh black pepper.
Next up is
the pastry:
Draw the
shape onto the pastry to make a shape about 10" square or as big as your
baking sheet can handle.
Once you have
cut the chicken out of the pastry, it's probably a good idea to heat the
oven up to about 180° C and prep your baking sheet.
Grease it
well and then put the cut out chicken shape on it.
Score a line
about a centimetre in from the edge of the chicken and cut out a strip
of pastry about the same width which you should then fasten onto the chicken
shape using milk or egg so that it forms a boundary wall.
Cook in the
oven for about twenty minutes or until risen about four times it's original
size.
Take it out
of the oven and push down the middle section where you scored.
You can then
pour the chicken mixture into the middle of the pie, but we haven't created
the top yet so hold up!
To create
the top for the pie:
Roll out the
remaining pastry and, using a bottle top or cutter about 3cm in diameter,
cut out circles of pastry.
Fill the pie
with the chicken mixture and cover it using the pastry circles.
Start at
the tail end (you may need to trim some of the circles) and work your
way to the head end of the pie.
Once you
get to the bottom of the neck you can stop using the circles and create
a headpiece.
If you need
to know what I mean, have a look at a Kellogg's Cornflakes packet and
you'll understand.
You can also
add a pastry eye if you're feeling artistic.
Glaze the
pie (this is where the food colouring comes in if you want to give the
"feathers" an authentic(!) look), using milk or eggs and then bung it
into the oven once more.
Since everything
has been cooked apart from the pastry on top of the pie, you can use that
as your basis for when to pull it out of the oven, but you should give
it at least half an hour.