Chicken Pie

This is one of the food I specially make for J. He said the best one was the one he ate from a certain bakery back then in Medan when he was young.
I have tried several chicken pie recipes but I still have not yet found the one that J deemed alike to that glorious chicken pie in his childhood.

Today for our first anniversary (yay!) I finally made one which is quite acceptable to his taste it seems :D

Pie Crust:

I am following this recipe ingredients, doubled for this double crust chicken pie:
- 500 gr all purpose flour
- 250 gr butter, straight from the fridge
- 1 tsp of salt
- 10 tbsp of cold water

I found that my food processor could not really fully incorporate the water to the dough. The water contaminated flour parts were collected in the bottom instead. So, I can't simply rely on it to make this pie crust.
However, having it certainly beats having to cut manually all the butters into the flour the way I used to do it (I used to use two knives since I have no pastry knife).

So, this is how I did it:
- pour the flour + salt into the food processor, pulse it around 3 times, around 1 second each.
- cut the butter into small cubes and drop each cube into the flour one by one, making sure each is covered by flours.
- pulse the food processor 3-5 times, around 1 second each. As the result you should have sand-like flour texture.
- pour the flour in a bowl.
- wet your hands with cold water (it's especially easy now since on winter like this the cold water is really really cold.)
- add the cold water to the flour 1 tbsp at a time while kneading it with the tip of your fingers. Kneading isn't really an appropriate word here actually : make some pinching motions, press the flours to make them stick with each others, collect them all in one spot, turn them over when you can make them into 1 big ball.
- I didn't really want to over-knead it, so, once I got them into forming 1 big ball, I used cling-wrap to cover it, and put them in the freezer :D
It was a mistake though, I should have just put it in the fridge instead so I didn't have to thaw it later xP
- Leave them while you make the filling.

Chicken Pie Filling :
- 3 half chicken breasts, minced into small cubes, mix them with a bit of lemon + 1 tsp salt.
- 1 big onion, minced
- 6 garlics, crushed, minced
- 1 quite big leek, chopped
- thyme powder
- paprika powder
- chili powder
- 3 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp black pepper
- olive oil for sautee-ing
- 2 or 3 stick carrots, cut in julienne since I'm lazy :P
cutting them into small cubes would be much preferable.

How to:
- Heat a cooking pan, add the olive oil once it's hot. Add onion, wait until it's almost transparent, add garlic, wait a bit more, and add leeks.
- Add the chicken, add all the seasoning.
- Leave it while stirring it once in awhile until the chicken is half cooked.
- Add the carrots, cook until they all are done, rather dry, and has proportionate salt/sugar balance.

Finishing:
- Divide the pie crust dough into the bottom+side part and the top part.
- Roll the bottom+side part, and fit them in the pie pan.
My frozen dough didn't behave so well, so I just pressed them right into the pie pan instead :D
- Make some holes using forks, bake this bottom + side parts in the preheated 180 degree oven for 20mins.
- Pour the filling into the cooked pie crusts, cover them with the top part.
Make sure the top part covers all the side crust too.
- I generously sprinkled some parmigiano cheese on top of this, just because I love cheese :D
- Again, make some holes, and bake it for another 20mins.


The crumbly pie is now ready to be eaten =9