Cosy Cooking: Mushroom, Leek and ‘Chicken’ Pie
Song Suggestions:
Forever and Always - Shania Twain
Candy - Paolo Nutini
Ingredients:
2 tbsp dairy-free butter
2 onions
3 large garlic cloves
2 leeks
1 box (300g) cup mushrooms
10 sprigs fresh thyme
350g “chicken” pieces
1 veg stock cube (250ml boiling water)
1 tbsp cornstarch (well dissolved in 5 tbsp cold water - this is your cornstarch slurry)
1 sheet puff pastry
Recipe:
You’ll need the oven at 200°C. Turn it on whenever you judge best, depending on how fast or slow you know it’ll take to preheat!
Prepare your veg: peel and dice the onions, peel and slice the garlic, wash and slice the leeks, slice the mushrooms and remove the leaves of thyme from the sprigs.
In a pan, gently melt the dairy-free butter and add the onion and garlic. Cook until aromatic and translucent (about 4 minutes).
Add the leeks, mushrooms and thyme. Cook until they have reduced in size (about 8-10 minutes) and both are soft.
Add the chicken pieces to the mix, crumble in the stock cube over it all mix, add the boiling water to help dissolve it and stir everything well. Cook until most of the water has evaporated.
Add your cornstarch slurry - cook until the sauce has thickened, this should only take 2 to 3 minutes. Once cooked, turn the heat off and set aside.
Roll out your pastry and lay your ovenproof dish on top, upside down, and cut out a lid for your pie. Leave an extra centimetre of pastry so you can tuck it in around your pie!
Into an ovenproof dish, add your pie filling. Lay the pastry sheet on top and using a spoon slide the edges down the side of the pie and tuck it in all the way around.
Decorate it however you wish, if at all, then “egg wash” it! Make sure to cut two slits in the lid so that steam can escape as it cooks.
Bake for 20 minutes at 200°C, or until the pastry turns crisp and golden brown.
A Bite Out of Life
When we carve pumpkins, we’re all so keen on saving the flesh to make soups and all sorts, but the seeds are just as good! Here’s a top tip on how to turn them into a tasty snack. Place all your pumpkin pulp and seeds in a bowl as you carve them. When you’ve finished, tip the contents of that bowl into a bucket of water. The seeds will float and the pulp will sink. Sift out the seeds and lay them on a tea towel overnight to dry out, with another tea towel over the top. The following day, split them in half. In one half, coat in 1 tbsp olive oil and a sprinkling of rock salt. With the other half, use 1-2 tbsp brown sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon. Roast in the oven at 180°C for about 20 minutes, cool before eating and enjoy!
