31 Days: the one with Chicken Pot Pie

Tonight we had chicken pot pie. It's one of my favorite recipes, but I don't make it very often because it's pretty involved. The longer we live here the better I become and figuring out good easy recipes, but from time to time I have to go back to some of my favorites. This is one of them.

First, I have to thaw the chicken. We buy our whole chickens frozen. You can get them fresh (and by fresh I mean alive), but they're more expensive and more work that way!

The Chicken Pot Pie can also be made from chicken breasts baked in the oven, but we usually can't find breasts in Geita so when I have them I save them for recipes that specifically require breasts.

The chicken starts cooking early in the day so that I will have enough time to pull apart all the meat and get the pot pie together before dinner.

Later in the day I remove the chicken from the bone and separate out the weird looking stuff for the dogs.

Next, I throw together a basic pie crust and put it in the fridge to chill. If you've never made a pie crust, do give it a try sometime. It's really not that hard. A basic pie crust is flour, a little salt and sugar, butter cut in, and a little cold water. Are you familiar with that whole cutting in thing? It's a process used in pie crusts, scones, biscuits, and sometimes streusel topping. Recipes usually call for a pastry blender, which is perfect for the job, but they often say, "pastry blender or 2 knives". Oh pray tell what DO they expect you to do with 2 knives?!! The first time I came across a recipe like this I didn't have a pastry blender and I remember staring at my mixture with 2 knives in hand thinking, "now what?" There is a better option if you don't have a pastry blender.
A big hole cheese grater.
You just grate the cold butter into the flour and then work it around with your hands. You're trying to get the butter down to pea sized pieces all mixed into the flour. I almost always use my cheese grater now, if I'm using butter. I also use margarine sometimes. I never used margarine in the states for anything, but butter is twice the price of margarine here and you can't always get it in Geita. And no, I don't chill the margarine. Don't tell Martha Stewart. I just use my room temp margarine and try not to overwork it.

In the evening I cook up the carrots, make the sauce and add the peas. Peas and carrots. There is no other way to do chicken pot pie in my opinion.

The finished chicken pot pie!

 This is what I love to see after dinner: leftovers! We'll be eating this again tomorrow night!