Chicken Pie with Stuffing Dumplings

This is definitely pie weather. I love the advent of autumn, when the leaves begin to turn brown and the evenings start lengthening. I love the smell of autumn and the crisp mornings that give way to often beautiful afternoons when the sun shines through the fantastically coloured leaves that still cling on to the trees branches before they eventually give up their struggle when winter sets in. Most of all, I love the foods that are available in autumn. There just seems to be a real sense of bounty and abundance as the growing season stutters to a halt and everything is harvested.

Apples, pears, plums, blackberries, mushrooms, game... the list is endless and the opportunities for the cook, equally so! In particular, I equate autumn with comfort food; food that is warming to the belly, body and soul – food that is…well… just comforting to eat! I love the freshness and vitality of the foods that are available in spring and summer, but these are not really the seasons of comfort food.

Pies are perfect food for this time of year. I often prepare the filling in advance and then, just before it is required, I top it with buttery pastry and then bake it so that it emerges golden brown from the oven with some of the gravy or sauce juices bubbling up around the edges of the pastry and the savoury aromas tempting you to sample its glories. I defy anyone to exercise restraint when presented with such a wondrous thing!

Pies don’t have to be fancy things… and really, any casserole or stew mixture can be tumbled into a pie dish, topped with pastry and called a pie. Pies can be made from the leftover meat from roast dinners or can be made from scratch. Often when I’m making a stew, I make double the quantity so that I can make a pie for the next day’s dinner.

In this recipe I have poached a whole bird as I prefer the meat cooked this way rather than roasted in advance when making a chicken pie. Poaching the chicken also has the added advantage of creating a beautifully flavoured stock, some of which is used to create the gravy for the pie and the remainder can be used as the basis for a well-flavoured soup either a chicken noodle soup or my favourite when I have a good homemade stock – minestrone!

Classic chicken pies combinations are chicken and mushroom or chicken and leek pie, but here I wanted something that included something a little bit more substantial. I toyed with the idea of adding some parboiled potatoes, but felt that these would probably disintegrate when completely cooked and make the overall pie very stodgy and a little laborious to eat. I also didn’t want a very thick creamy sauce but wanted the intense flavours of the stock to come through without the addition of cream.

In the end I decided to make little stuffing balls or dumplings as I have called the. I made these out of breadcrumbs, sweated onions, lemon zest, herbs and sausage meat and browned them lightly before adding them to my pie mixture. They were absolutely delicious and struck a perfect balance between giving the pie a little more substance but without being heavy to eat.

 

The pastry that you top your pie with is very much a matter of choice and preference. Shortcrust pastry can be used but I favour the use of puff pastry. Although, I do make puff pastry every now and again and despite the fact that it is not difficult, it is time consuming, so for something like this pie and for convenience I would recommend using store-bought puff.

 

Ingredients:

To poach the chicken:
1 whole free-range, ‘oven-ready’ chicken
2 onions peeled and halved

3 or 4 sticks of celery chopped into large chunks

3 large carrots, peeled and chopped into large chunks

3 garlic cloves, peeled and bruised

2 bay leaves

1 large sprig of thyme

8 peppercorns

Stuffing balls:

25g butter

1 small onion, peeled and chopped finely

150g fresh white breadcrumbs

½ tblsp fresh sage

1tblsp fresh thyme, finely chopped

1tblsp fresh parsley

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

100g sausagemeat

1tblsp vegetable oil

Sauce:

25g butter

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

125g smoked lardons or smoked bacon sliced into lardons

400ml stock in which the chicken was cooked

A squeeze of lemon juice

Salt & freshly ground pepper

2 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds about ½ cm thick and parboiled for 10 minutes

To finish:

300g puff pastry

1 egg, beaten
 

Method:

To poach the chicken:

1. Place the chicken along with all the other poaching ingredients into a large saucepan and cover with cold water to just cover. Place on the hob and bring up to the boil. Place a lid loosely on top of the saucepan and reduce the temperature so that the chicken is simmering gently. Allow to simmer for an hour.

2. Once the chicken is cooked remove from the stock and set aside to cool slightly before picking off the meat. Try not to break up the meat too much, but rather cut it into bite-sized chunks. Set aside.

3. Meanwhile throw the carcass back into the stock that you have created and allow everything to simmer away whilst you get on with making the stuffing balls. Do not cover saucepan this time as you want to intensify the flavours, by letting them reduce slightly.

Stuffing balls:

4. Heat the butter in a frying pan and sweat the onion for about ten minutes until soft and translucent in colour. Do not allow to colour. Add the breadcrumbs and stir gently with a wooden spoon so that they take on the buttery pan juices and the onion is well mixed in.

5. Transfer to a mixing bowl and add the chopped herbs and mix through again. Set the mixture aside and allow to cool slightly. Add the sausagemeat and mix in. I find it easier to use my hands to do this. Once everything is thoroughly mixed together, use your hands to roll little balls of the mixture, about the size of an unshelled walnut.

6. Heat the vegetable oil in a small frying pan and gently fry the stuffing balls on all sides until they are a light golden brown colour. Remove from the frying pan and place on some absorbent paper to mop up any excess oil.

Sauce:

7. Heat the butter in a small saucepan and once gently bubbling add the bacon lardons and allow to cook for 4 to 5 minutes over a moderate heat before adding the chopped onion. Continue to cook for a further 5 minutes.

8. Sprinkle over the flour and stir in using a small wooden spoon. Add a ladle of the chicken stock and allow to bubble before adding another ladle of stock, mixing all the time. Gradually add the remainder of the 400ml of stock. You will have quite a light sauce. Finally add in the cooked carrots add the lemon juice and season well, adjusting to taste.

To finish:

9. Preheat oven to 200C/Fan Oven 180C/Gas Mark 6.

10. Place a large pie dish on a baking tray. Place the reserved chicken and stuffing balls in the pie dish and pour over the sauce, making sure that everything is well coated. Brush the rim with a little beaten egg and set aside.

11. Roll out the pastry into a rectangle about 25cm x 20cm and approximately ½ cm thick.

12. Cut a thin strip the width of the rim of your pie dish from the edge of the pastry. Place this strip, bending it to shape around the rim. Place the rest of the pastry sitting on this rim, covering the top of your pie encasing the filling. Trim around the edge and crimp the edges if you wish. You can also use pastry off-cuts to decorate the pie if you wish. Brush the top of the pie with a little of the beaten egg and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes until the pastry is well risen and golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve.

Serves 6.

 

Blackberry & Walnut Friands

I’m still a little obsessed with small cakes and miniaturised baked goods at the moment… but despite the extensive collection of cake tins and other baking accessories that I own, I only have a couple of cupcake pans and one miniature muffin tin. However, I went a little bit mad online last week and addressed these equipment shortcomings in an emphatic way! Let’s just say that I am now the proud owner of a friand tin – which is like a cupcake tin but with oval shaped ‘holes’. I may have ordered some other much needed (ahem) baking accessories, but more of these again.

As regular followers of this blog will know, I have been experimenting with baking financiers – little light almond (although other nuts can be used) sponge cakes recently. Financiers are usually baked in small, rectangular moulds, like flat mini-loaf cakes to resemble gold bars in honour of the workers in the French financial district after whom they were named and originally sold to. As with most things there are now a range of moulds available and personally, I have produced some very successful versions of financiers using mini muffin tins. You don’t absolutely have to use special tins or moulds to bake them and I certainly didn’t absolutely need specialist tins to bake the friands… but I REALLY wanted one!!!

Now, here’s the thing, I have been talking about financiers and friands as if they are two completely different types of cake, but to be honest… they really aren’t! They are made in practically the same way, but friands are baked in the oval shaped moulds and, in size, are more comparable to cupcake or muffin.

Friands are hugely popular in Australia and are a mainstay in many bakeries and cake shops, whereas financiers are extremely French! Whilst both can be made without the addition of fruit, I like to include some because I find the combination of fruit and nuts extremely satisfying to eat. I particularly like using soft fruits and berries in the friands as their slight sharpness and intense fruit flavour cuts through the sweetness.

The hedgerows on the land behind my house are laden with blackberries at the moment, so it seemed appropriate to use some of them. I was going to use ground almonds as my nut of choice, but recently got some beautiful walnuts so chose these instead. I love walnuts, but realise that they are not as popular as almonds, hazelnuts and pecans. The berries that I managed to pick were beautiful and plump and when baked in the friands, released their dark purple juices which tasted wonderful against the slightly tannic note of the walnuts. This is a pairing that I will definitely be making again.
 

The great thing about both friands and financiers is that due to the inclusion of nuts, they do not dry out or go stale quickly and can be stored very successfully in an air-tight container for up to 5 days. In fact, the only downside in making them, as far as I can see, is that quite a number of egg whites are required. This inevitably means that you are left with quite a lot of egg yolks. For me this is not a problem, because I love any excuse to make custards and creamy tarts, which predicates the need for loads of yolks! If this doesn’t appeal, I should point out that cartons of pasteurised egg whites are now readily available to buy in many supermarkets. I find them really handy when I’m going on a macaron or meringue baking marathon.

For all their simplicity in terms of making them, I think that there is something very sophisticated and grown up about these friands. The recipe makes 12 friands, but you could easily half it to make 6 if you’d prefer. Also, I have used ground walnuts which I roasted at 150C for 10 minutes and then ground in my food processor when cool and also used some store-bought ground almonds as well, but you could use ground walnuts only or substitute others.

Ingredients:

250g icing sugar
50g plain flour

125g ground walnuts

45g ground almonds

6 large egg whites, lightly beaten

200g unsalted butter, melted and allowed to brown to the beurre noisette (nutty brown) stage and allowed to cool slightly

125g blackberries
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C/Fan Oven 180C/ Gas Mark 6. Butter a 12-hole friand tin and then flour each of the holes, shaking out the excess. Set aside.

2. Sift the icing sugar and flour into a large mixing bowl and add the ground nuts mixing well with your hands so that everything is well distributed. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg whites. Use a small wire whisk to mix in the egg whites and once they have been incorporated, add the butter and mix through again. The batter will be quite runny.

3. Divide the batter between the 12 holes of the friand tin. Pop a couple of blackberries on top of each friand and bake in the preheated oven for 15-17 minutes until well risen and a golden brown colour. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

 

Makes 12.
 

Matcha Financiers with Redcurrants

Following on from my newly discovered love for baking financiers, I decided to do a little experimentation with the basic recipe and these are the initial result. This is essentially the same recipe as the one that I have previously given, the only difference being that I have substituted green tea powder for some of the plain flour and have used vanilla in place of the almond extract. I felt that the almond extract might be too assertive against the delicate almost herbaceous taste of the matcha green tea. I decided that vanilla would complement the flavour of the matcha much more effectively.

 

Green tea and in particular Japanese matcha green tea is lauded as possessing great health giving properties and restorative qualities. In many ways, matcha is an acquired taste, but luckily it is one that I have acquired and I love its taste. Ironically, I rarely drink it as a beverage, but do use it quite regularly in my baking.

The challenge facing the cook when using it in recipes is to use enough so that it imparts its beautiful vibrant almost artificial-looking green colour into those dishes in which it is used, but without using too much so that the food tastes ‘grassy’ or bitter. For this reason, I have given a specific weight of matcha powder which I recommend be used in this recipe, rather than giving a more vague teaspoon measurement.

Matcha can be difficult to get your hands on and Asian food stores would be your best bet in this regard. Alternatively, it can be bought online. It is expensive to buy, but provided you store it in the foil pouch that it is normally sold in, it keeps well and lasts an eternity.

To be completely honest, I made these financiers because I still had some redcurrants remaining after the original financiers that I made, but I am delighted with the result and think that the redcurrants work fantastically well with the matcha from a flavour point of view but the colour contrast is also fantastic. When my eldest daughter saw them, she declared them to be very Christmassy looking. She may have a point and if you were to substitute cranberries for the redcurrants, they would have a definite festive feel to them! This is what I love about cooking and baking… once you understand the basic principles behind a certain technique or the basic recipe, you can then adapt it to your own tastes and let your imagination run riot, substituting different nuts or fruits or other ingredients. Sometimes the results won’t be great, but you may also discover some hidden culinary gems that will then go on to be mainstays in your cooking repertoire.

The nature of writing a blog of this type dictates that in the main you will only ever post recipes that have been success and that you have tried and tested thoroughly. I can declare in absolute honesty, that everything you see on this blog has been tried out and cooked by me a number of times. What you don’t see are some of my less successful cookery and recipe experiments or the many attempts (resulting in failure) that I have made at creating notoriously technically difficult recipes like macarons, canelés, to mention a few.
 

Ingredients:

75g ground almonds
100g icing sugar
45g plain flour

10g matcha green tea powder

4 large egg whites

¼ tsp vanilla extract

75g unsalted butter, melted and allowed to cool a little

75g fresh redcurrants
 

Method:

1. Using a pastry brush, butter 22-24 holes of a mini-muffin tin and then flour them, shaking out any excess. Set aside.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the ground almonds, icing sugar flour and green tea powder. Add the egg whites and almond extract to the dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon, mix together until well mixed through. Next, add the melted butter and mix again until it is fully incorporated. Cover the mixing bowl with some cling film and refrigerate the cake batter for at least 30 minutes.

To bake the financiers:

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Spoon or pipe the cake batter into the prepared tins, filling each about 2/3 full. Pop 3 or 4 redcurrants on top of each financier and then bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes until well risen, slightly springy to the touch and just beginning to colour around the edge.

4. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Remove from the tins and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes 22-24.

Redcurrant Financiers

I love small cakes and buns – little sweet delights that can be eaten in one bite or (when I’m feeling more sophisticated) nibbled on with an elegance I don’t really possess! I love macaroons, fairy cakes, madeleines and all manner of single portion sized bakes, but to be honest, I had never made financiers before.

Financiers are small little sponge cakes which hail from France. They usually contain ground nuts, with ground almonds being the most commonly used. The dry ingredients in the mixture are bound together with egg whites and melted butter and the batter is then baked in small little moulds or tins. What I found particularly interesting about most of the recipes that I came across is that the egg whites are not whisked prior to being introduced to the dry ingredients but are instead mixed in as they are. Mostly where egg whites are divorced from their yolk partners in recipes, they are whisked in order to incorporate air into the finished product. Despite the fact that this is not the case here, the cakes are surprising light with a slightly springy texture and are not at all heavy to eat.

Most recipes also call for the butter to be heated and allowed colour to the beurre noisette stage. Essentially you heat the butter over a gentle heat until it starts to brown and smells slightly ‘nutty’. You have to watch over the butter like a hawk, because it is easy to overdo the browning and if it occurs it tastes bitter and burnt. There is no doubting that browned butter does add an extra dimension to the finished cakes, but I also came across recipes, where simply melted butter was used. In the recipe that I give here, I wanted my finished financiers to have a very pale colour and a purity of taste which I felt would work better with the redcurrants that I had chosen to use. I experimented using butter that had been just melted and also butter that has been brought to the beurre noisette stage. My suspicions regarding the finished product were correct and I must admit that I much preferred, from a taste perspective, the version that used plain melted butter.

I often feel sorry for redcurrants… they so often seem to be used merely as decorative afterthoughts rather than as an ingredient in their own right. Whilst there is no doubt that a sprig of redcurrants in all their jewel-like splendour are beautiful, they also have much to offer in terms of taste. The thing that I always find surprising about them is that they are far sharper and tart tasting than their iridescent red colour would lead you to believe. This is one reason why I think they worked particularly well in this recipe; these financiers ARE sweet, but the sharpness of the redcurrants cuts through the sweetness to create a little bite-sized cake that was well-balanced and just heavenly to eat.

This is an incredibly fuss-free recipe to make; the only tiresome aspect is that the moulds do have to be well prepared before the cake batter is added to them. This means that each individual one has to be brushed with very soft butter and then floured. I hate tedious jobs like this, but I am a seasoned enough baker at this stage to appreciate that so often with cooking and particularly with baking, proper preparation is the key to success.

Following on from my great success with these financiers, I decided to take the plunge and ordered some proper financier mould on the interweb thingy! In the photos that accompany this post, you will see that I used mini-muffin tins and this is what I suggest you do, if you don’t happen to own financier moulds. I will post the recipes from my other financier experimentations over the next couple of weeks.
      

Ingredients:

75g ground almonds
100g icing sugar

50g plain flour

4 large egg whites

¼ tsp almond extract

75g unsalted butter, melted and allowed to cool a little

75g fresh redcurrants
 

Method:

1. Using a pastry brush, butter 22-24 holes of a mini-muffin tin and then flour them, shaking out any excess. Set aside.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the ground almonds, icing sugar and flour. Add the egg whites and almond extract to the dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon, mix together until well mixed through. Next, add the melted butter and mix again until it is fully incorporated. Cover the mixing bowl with some cling film and refrigerate the cake batter for at least 30 minutes.

To bake the financiers:

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Spoon or pipe the cake batter into the prepared tins, filling each about 2/3 full. Pop 3 or 4 redcurrants on top of each financier and then bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes until well risen, slightly springy to the touch and just beginning to colour around the edge.

4. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes. Remove from the tins and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
 

Makes 22-24.
 

Roast Quail with Pomegranate, Honey, Cinnamon & Thyme

This is such an easy dish to prepare and packs a real flavour punch despite the relatively few ingredients that go into its making.
 Quail originally hail from the Middle East but are now farmed in Europe and are becoming increasingly popular and readily available to buy in many of the larger supermarkets and speciality food shops and butchers. Depending on their size and whether they are being served as a starter or main course one or two quail per person is usually sufficient. Here, I was lucky to get my hands on some nice plump little birds, so I served one per person, along with a chickpea and couscous salad generously flavoured with lemon, mint and flat leaf parsley, echoing some of the classic flavours of the Middle East and a passing nod to the quail’s origins.
 

My children love roast chicken and (as I have mentioned before) when served with all the trimmings, it is probably their favourite meal to eat. Personally, I prefer eating game, particularly game birds and have been trying to tempt my three into being a little more adventurous with what they deign to dine on. I do think that there’s something pitiful about the fact that they like chicken nuggets and dippers over experiencing the joys of eating pheasant, wild pigeon, partridge, grouse and other game. I fully appreciate the fact that some game birds taste…well… very GAMEY… and might not appeal to younger palates, but I haven’t given up the fight.
 

Rather than serve them pigeon or something radically different to what they are used to eating, I have recently started introducing them to different types of fowl including guinea fowl and quail. Admittedly, I presented each of these as “small chickens” and only owned up to what they really were after my gang had eaten them and declared them to be delicious. Sometimes we are too squeamish about the food we eat and are put off eating delicious things because we don’t like the sound of them. Being a borderline glutton with an adventurous appetite for all types of food, I have never been afraid to try anything new and I will admit that I would like to pass this on to my children.

I was delighted with the reaction to this dish and thrilled that it has been requested again by my gang. At its simplest, the quail are simply roasted, but the dish has oodles of added flavour by virtue of the garlic, herbs and honey with which the birds were cooked. This is a really simple and flavoursome dish, which I encourage you to try. You will see from the instruction given that this is an incredibly uncomplicated dish to prepare and in my books that is a further plus in its favour.

Ingredients:

4-6 quail, prepared with innards removed and oven-ready
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 lemon, cut into 4-6 wedges

A few sprigs of fresh thyme

2tblsp runny honey

1tblsp of white wine vinegar

Seeds of 3 pomegranates

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan Oven 170C/Gas Mark 5.

2. Place the prepared quail in a roasting tin and stuff their cavities with a lemon wedge and some of the garlic and thyme. Once you have stuffed the cavities, gently truss the quail legs together with some string.

3. Scatter over the pomegranate seeds from two of the pomegranates and nestle more of the garlic and thyme around the birds. Drizzle over the honey and add the white wine vinegar. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast in the preheated oven for approximately 25 minutes, basting a couple of times during the cooking with the roasting juices. When ready the birds should have a deep golden colour.

4. Scatter over the seeds of the final pomegranate, just before serving.
 

Serves 4.