What's For Dinner Wednesday? Chicken Pot Pie

Brought to you by my favourite jailbird housewife, Martha Stewart, this low fat chicken pot pie is easy and perfect for a two dish mid week meal. I have changed it slightly just to save me some time and extra washing up. If you prefer to do things the Martha way, you can find the original recipe on her site.

Hopefully it won't go the way of my ocean trout pie after Sunday's disaster cooking day. Come to think of it, I have had more failures in the kitchen this month than I have had all my cooking life! So maybe I should have a new blog segment keeping score of disasters versus successes?

Ok so today's low fat pie sounds very easy, please let me know if you also give it a go and let me know what yours is like because at the rate I'm going even the most simple recipes are ruinable.

Ingredients

Serves 4

2 large pieces of chicken breast (12 to 14 ounces each)
Coarse salt and ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 carrots, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups low-fat (1%) milk
1 package (10 ounces) frozen peas, thawed
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 filo sheets (each 12 by 17 inches), thawed

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place chicken on a rimmed baking sheet; season with salt and pepper. Roast 20- 30 minutes. Shred meat, and set aside.

While chicken is roasting, heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large saucepan over medium.

Add carrots, onion, and thyme; season with salt and pepper, and cook until carrots are crisp-tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Add flour, and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

Gradually add milk, stirring until smooth. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture comes to a simmer and thickens.

Remove from heat; stir in peas, lemon juice, and chicken, and season with salt and pepper. Pour filling into a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate.

Stack filo on a work surface. Using a paring knife, cut out an 11-inch circle from the stack; discard trimmings. Stack 2 circles on work surface, and brush gently with 1 teaspoon oil; repeat with remaining circles and oil.

*I'm using one large square baking dish so I don't have to worry about the fiddly trimming, I'll just whack the ready cut squares of filo onto my pie filling*

Place pastry stack over filling, and press down about 1/2 inch from the edge so pastry fits inside rim of pie plate. Bake until golden and bubbling, 20 to 25 minutes. Let potpie cool 15 minutes before serving.


I have not bothered to translate into metric because I think most of us here in the metric world are more used to translating from imperial than they are doing the reverse. Let me know if you can't, and I'll edit this post.