Chicken Pot Pie

About once a month my office has a themed potluck and everyone brings a dish to share for lunch.  We have had some really good themes: summer salads, backyard bbq, a "dip off" dip making contest, taco potluck, brunch bar, the list goes on and on. Its much better than my last office job where we would constantly have slimy hotel pans full of leftover eggplant parm from luncheons elsewhere in the office. This month for our staff meeting my managers organized this "back to basics trivia" game as a training refresher and so we decided to also have a "Pub Grub" themed potluck to go along with it.

Nothing much was coming to mind when I was brainstorming pub themed things to make. I made some turkey burgers sliders for the backyard bbq potluck that we had about a month ago so burgers were definitely out.  I thought about doing nachos, but then I decided to take the theme in more the  english pub direction rather than American sportsbar. My initial idea was to make a Welsh Rarebit but it seemed like it would be difficult to transport/ heat up at work/ toast all the bread and assemble. Then I thought about doing 'this' cheddar pull apart bread from Smitten Kitchen, but baking bread from scratch seemed like too much of an undertaking in the hour and half between leaving work and yoga class starting. 

After looking around on lots of different pub menus online I finally decided on chicken pot pie.  Until now the entire story of my experience with pot pie as been the Amy's frozen vegetarian pot pies my mom used to order by the case from her food coop.  We would eat them all the time for dinner. They were about as good as you would imagine a vegan frozen pot pie to be, which is not very good at all.

This pot pie is much better. I decided to simplify and just do a top crust rather than a bottom and a top, for one because I only had a half pound of butter at home and didn't feel like making a second grocery store trip, and two because it seemed like the bottom crust might get kind of soggy/rubbery anyway.



For the crust I used Pim's fantastic recipe using half all purpose flour and half whole wheat pastry. Her recipe as written was enough for two 9" pie tops, if you want to make two pies with both a bottom and a top you can double it, or if you are only making one use as is and the cut the filling recipe in half.

First prepare the dough and refridgerate, preferably several hours or even the day before you plan to roll it out to cover the pies. I rushed mine a bit which is why the top crust shrunk up when I baked it. Still delicious so no matter, just not as pro looking as it could be.

Ingredients for the filling:

3 tablespoons butter

4-5 ribs of celery, chopped

1 sweet onion, diced

2 shallots, minced

1/2 cup white wine

3 tablespoons corn starch (organic please, or its almost definitely GMO fyi)

1/2 cup chicken stock

3 peeled and diced carrots

8 oz package of boneless chicken thighs, sliced into small strips

1 cup of button mushrooms, cut in half

3 medium sized russett potatoes, peeled if you prefer and cubed

3 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large frying pan and add onions, celery and shallots sauteed on medium until onions are clear, add mushrooms.  Meanwhile boil some salted water in a large pot to cook the potatoes. Add the chicken, wine, chicken stock and carrots to the onions and saute until chicken is cooked through. Cook the potatoes in the boiling and salted water until tender but slighly underdone, drain in a colander. Add potatoes to vegetable and chicken mixture.

Turn off heat, to incorperate corn starch without creating lumps I spooned some hot broth into a seperate bowl with the cornstarch and whisked until smooth, then added this to the pan with the rest of the broth and veggies. Add chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste .  Spoon or pour the vegetable mixture into two buttered 9" pie pans. Roll out chilled pie dough into rounds and place on top of vegetable mixture, press down the edges and make several slits with a sharp knife to allow steam to escape. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While oven is heating refridgerate pies to allow crust dough to rest a bit. Just before putting pies into the oven brush the tops with egg wash. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes, then turn down heat to 350 and bake another 20 minutes or until crust is browned and filling is bubbling up slightly around the edges.



As Promised: Paneer and Paratha

As I suggested I might  in yesterday's post about Bollywood Theater, I decided to try and make homemade Paneer cheese and homemade Parathas to make my own version of Kati Rolls. If you are less ambitious you could easily make these with store bought Paneer, or even substitute tofu, and use whole wheat flour tortillas instead of Parathas. 

Paneer ingredients: milk and lemon juice

The homemade Paneer was ridiculously easy, all you need is milk and lemon juice.   You can find instructions on how to do it yourself 'here'.  While I was waiting for the milk to boil I started making dough for the Parathas and then fried them up while I was straining the whey from the cheese curds. 

You want to add enough lemon juice so that the whey becomes clear , yellowish and separate from the curds. I had to use twice as much lemon juice as the recipe called for. 

Straining the whey

When I searched for a recipe for Parathas I found most of them were about the same with some slight variations, most don't call for a specified amount of water and just recommend you use as much as needed. I included the recipe as I made them but depending on the moisture level in the flour you use, you may need more or less water. I decided to use whole wheat pastry flour instead of regular whole wheat flour because I wanted the flat breads to be very flaky and tender.  

Parathas

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour + extra for dusting

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons softened butter

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup safflovwer oil, 1 tbsp reserved for brushing flatbreads, the rest for frying

In a standing mixer with bread hook attachment, mix butter, flour, salt and slowly add water until a soft dough forms. You want the dough to  be dry enough to handle easily but not too stiff.  Knead dough in mixer until smooth and springy. This should only take a minute or two. Lightly dust counter top or cutting board with flour, form dough into a ball and allow to rest for 10 minutes or more. 

Once dough has rested cut into 8 equal pieces and shape into small balls. Next roll out one small ball flat with a rolling pin. Brush with oil, fold the dough in half onto itself, brush the top with oil, and then fold in half onto itself again. Dust with flour and then roll out flat. There is a tutorial with pictures 'here' if these instructions are confusing. Fry each flatbread on each side until the surface is bubbled and slightly browned. 

Rolling out and brushing with oil

To squeeze out extra water I weighed the cheese down with the bottom of a springform pan and my cast iron tea kettle

 I left the cheese weighed down while I went to my yoga class, by the time I got home 2 hours later it was ready to fry up.

Cheese after several hours under a weight

 To fill the rolls I made a simple stir fry with one clove of  garlic, butter, mustard seeds, curry powder, the juice of half a lime, a splash of vinegar, savoy cabbage and cilantro.

 To assemble I beat one egg in a bowl then poured it onto a hot skillet, topping the egg with a paratha immediately so the egg sticks to the bread as it cooks. As soon as the egg is set flip the bread to heat the other side. Then fill with paneer and cabbage.

Rolled up and served with tamarind chutney

Bollywood Theater

As you can probably tell from the content of this blog, I love food, and I love eating out.

However, I can be picky when it comes to chosing restaurants: I basically have a policy to not eat at anywhere the food is not as delicious as what I would cook at home.  This probably sounds bratty and but if I am going to spend the money to go to a restaurant, I want to be impressed.  Living in Portland makes it easier as there are tons of incredibly good restaurants all over the city. Creatures of habit, Liam and I often go to the same handful of restaurants but lately I have been trying to diversify  and check out some new places.

I have been wanting to go to the newish restaurant Bollywood Theater since I saw it on Eater PDX a few months ago. We rarely make it up to the Alberta area in Northeast Portland where the restaurant is located.  Its kind of a trek to get up there from the part of town we live in, plus there is a huge hill in the way so some serious modivation is needed to want to bike out there.  But, this summer Liam has a car for his job so this Sunday we took advantage of the free ride and headed up there for lunch.

.Bollywood Theater definitely reminded us both of our most frequented restaurant in town, Porque No?  You order at the counter and then they bring the food out to you, the decor is also pretty similar: repurposed fixtures, windows, cabinets, benches, kitschy decorations, and when we were there a bumpin' old school hip hop soundtrack.  Late lunch time on a Sunday, the restaurant was pretty quiet.




Condiment bar

 

The menu is indian street food inspired small plates. Liam and I always share when we go out, small plates are perfect for us since we get to try lots of different things. For the two of we ordered the Paneer cheese kati roll, a flakey whole grain flatbread roll filled with seared fresh cheese, egg, and gingery vegetable mixture.  We also got an order of fried okra, since okra is my new favorite vegetable, served with a raita dipping sauce. Then we got the chicken curry thali meal, served with flatbread, dal, sambar, and chutney. Plus a mexican coke to share. Everything was really good. I loved the kati rolls and have been doing some searching for some good parantha recipes to make them at home. They would make a perfect lunch or even breakfast on their own. The okra was also really delicious, usually when I pan fry okra at home I cut it into thick rounds, but this okra was cut in a thin julienne and deep fried. Amazing. We enjoyed the curry too, simple, not overly salty and rich the way that indian food can sometimes be. I am definitely excited to go back and excited to try to recreate the kati rolls at home, maybe even with some homemade paneer.

Kati Rolls

Chicken curry thali plate

 An added bonus to Bollywood Theater is that it shares a building with ice cream shop Salt and Straw. 








Birthday Dress Muslin into Top

Back in November I picked up Simplicity 2406 to make as my birthday dress.  I bought some pretty spendy black silk crepe for the actual dress but I decided to do a trial run with some patterned silk I got on sale last summer. As I have learned always happens with "wearable muslins" the first version

of this dress had a bunch of problems that made it not particularly wearable.

For one, I cut the whole dress is one straight size when I really should altered the pattern to account for the fact that my top half is two dress sizes smaller than my bottom. The dress ended up quite baggy on the top, and weirdly clinging and tight around the hips. I love the fabric so much I tried a couple times to wear the dress but I always felt kind of goofy and uncomforable in it. Note to self: don't use beautiful silk fabric for first attempts on dresses. Fast forward to this spring and I got a new pair of jeans which I love and have restored my faith in denim. I wear them basically everyday and have come to realize that the main short-fall of wearing all dresses, all the time for the last few years is I have no tops.  I decided to cut off this odd fitting dress into a top and did a hand rolled hem. Best decision, after hanging unworn in my closet for 7 months I love it as a top and have worn it already a bunch.

Wiksten Tank

 I have been following Jenny Gordy's blog Wikstenmade and her line of beautiful clothing for years. I love her style and attention to detail. So when  Wiksten sewing patterns  recently became available as a downloadable pdfs I purchased a few despite my disdain for printing things out on my temperamental printer.

I had visions of this tank shirt sewn up in some woven Ikat or striped lightweight cotton for the summer.  Of course I had nothing like that in my giant chest full of fabric and I was putting off taking a trip to the fabric store until  in a fit of "I want to sew now!"I decided to test out the pattern with some strange geometric, gold, green, mustard and black jersey that I got 4 yards of last year at Fabric Depot's outdoor sale. I have been wondering what I was going to do with this fabric for awhile, not sure why I decided I needed 4 yards of it, but it was only $1 a yard so no harm no foul.

It was a bit tricky using jersey as the pattern is not necessarily intended for stretch fabric, but it all worked out pretty well.  The pattern is lovely, complete with french seams throughout, the shirt has a really nice cut. and came together in about an hour.

Despite the loud fabric I really like it and have worn it tons of times. It kind of reminds me of something from Forever 21, only it was actually cheaper if you can believe it. I definitely plan to sew up a few more of these tops for the summer.

Clafoutis Season

My preference for types of dessert foods definitely goes in cycles, sometimes I get really into baked goods and bake several times a week for months. Sometimes I have phases where the only sweet I am interested in is plain dark chocolate and have no interest in baking at all. With all the fruit in season, Summer is definitely a time I get into cakes, cobblers, and more recently Clafoutis. Clafoutis is a dessert from the Limousin region of France, traditionally made with cherries, but equally good with all kinds of fruits. A thin batter of flour, egg, butter and milk is poured over the fruit and baked creating a firm custard.  I find it really appealing because its so adaptable to whatever ingredients you have on hand.  Its also nice and light, equally good as a breakfast or dessert.


Strawberry Peach Clafoutis with Vanilla Bean
 1/2 cup melted butter, cooled
 3 eggs
 1/2 cup demerara
 1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup white rice flour
 1 cup whole milk
1 peach, sliced
1 pint strawberries, sliced
1 vanilla bean, split in halve.
 pinch of salt


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9" pie pan. Wash and slice fruits, set aside. In a standing mixer mix eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Add cooled butter, and milk. With a butter knife or spoon carefully scrap seeds from the inside of vanilla bean into batter. Add flours and salt. Mix to combine. Arrange fruit in pie plate and pour batter over fruit. Bake until batter has puffed up around the fruit and browned on the top. Allow to cool.  

Max's Quilt

Finally finished!
I am really proud of how this quilt came out.  The original quilt I made for baby Max was the first proper quilt I have ever made and I was so excited about how cute it turned out and was disappointed to say the least that I never got to give it to my friend and her baby. For this one I used the same triangle cutting technique as in the Zig Zag Quilt tutorial but made the triangles smaller and went with a different pattern for the front.  To take advantage of some of the beautiful fabrics I got at Cool Cottons I  did a pieced back, which I just love and I embroidered a small patch on the back with the baby's name.

Cuban Inspired Beef with Citrus and Green Plantains.

I recently was invited by my yoga studio to start practicing the advanced Bikram series with a small group of other students and teachers on Sunday mornings.  To prep for advanced you warm up by doing the regular 90 minute beginner series first.  The last three weeks my Sundays have involved yoga from 9am until about 1pm. I am pretty wiped out afterwards and starving and so the last few Sunday afternoons Liam and I have been going out for lunch at a delicious cuban restaurant, Pambiche, about a block from our apartment  We have gone their for dinner and breakfast many times over the years we have lived in Portland, but their lunch is a great new discovery. Their delicious food has reminded me how much I love Cuban cooking. I made this without a recipe, basically just drawing inspiration from the menu at Pambiche. It's ridiculously good. I wasn't sure how the green plaintains would work out just cooked in the sauce, but they held their shape and went really well with the sweet/sour/bacony sauce.

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1 1/2 pound beef stew meat
juice of 2 limes
2 cherry bomb peppers, seeded and sliced thin
1 medium yellow squash
1 medium zucchini
1 green plantain cut into cubes.
3 tablespoons butter or bacon fat

Melt butter or bacon fat in a dutch oven and brown meat. Remove and set aside, saute onions and garlic until soft. Add chili peppers, stew meat, lime juice, orange juice, vinegar, sugar and season with a pinch of salt. Cover and cook on low for 2 hours, or until meat is tender and starting to fall apart. Add plaintains and squash and continue cooking another 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Serve with white or yellow rice and optionally you can top with slices of crispy pan fried okra.