Chicken, Leek and Parsley Pie
The humble chicken pie; a notorious crowd pleaser and, in my opinion, the best one around.
The first step is poaching the chicken; place it in a large pan and tuck any roughly chopped veg you have kicking around; an onion, carrot, celery. You can pop a couple of bay leaves in too. Pour in enough water to come about halfway up the chicken. Bring the chicken to the boil, then reduce the heat, simmering gently for 1-1¼ hours with a lid covering.
When the chicken is cooked, remove from the pan, straining the stock (as it’ll be quite greasy) and set aside about 500ml. The rest you can freeze for another time. Leave the chicken to cool as it’ll make removing the meat from the bones much easier. Once the chicken has cooled, strip the meat from the carcass, discarding the skin and the bones. It will come away easily, in shreds and you can also cut into larger chunks.
In a medium sized pan, add 3 leeks, an onion and butter and sweat slowly until they have softened. Once translucent in colour shake in flour and add some milk to make a white sauce.
Make sure you cool the sauce too so that you don’t contaminate the cold chicken. It will also mean that the pastry won’t steam and cook when you put it on top of the dish. Also the parsley should retain more of it’s vibrancy if you wait to add it when the contents aren’t piping hot.
Once the chicken and the leeky sauce have cooled sufficiently, add the chicken to the sauce and stir in a bunch of chopped parsley.
Finally, pour into a pie dish, rolling out the pastry (shop bought ready rolled is just the ticket, no faff required and just as delicious). Lay the pastry on top of the dish sealing the edges and pop into a 180 degree pre-heated oven for about 40 mins, or until golden brown.
Serve with mashed potato and mountains of peas.