chicken pie

(Or, at least, the filling thereof).  We had a roast chicken last week, a 5lb one.  It fed four for one meal, we had a stir fry the next night, then Pete stripped the carcass and I made stock, and then soup from the bones.

But the remaining meat languished in the fridge – somehow we just didn’t get to it.  So last night, I made it into a filling for a brace of chicken pies.

I took two leeks, chopped them down the middle, and then into fine slices, and sautéd them off in some olive oil.  Chopped a pack of back bacon that really did need eating, but was not particularly good bacon, and added that to the pan. When the bacon was cooked, I tipped in the chopped chicken and stirred until it was hot.

Then added some flour to coat it all, a teaspoon of dijon mustard, and then milk until it was the sort of consistency I wanted.  All of this went on to a chorus of anguish from five cats, who felt that inside them was a much more suitable resting place for any chicken remains.  So they got the duck giblets from the night before – spoilt, you say? :)

It made two tubs’ worth of pie fillings, which will make eight portions of pie – so the chicken did 14 portions, plus soup, for a fiver.

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chicken (and duck) soup

I stuck the chicken carcass in the slow cooker (how I love that thing!) with just some water, and cooked it overnight to make stock. And then I cooked it again the next night, as I hadn’t got round to removing the chicken from it and stripping the last of the meat from the bones (Pete did it for me in the end).

I had quite a lot of elderly veg languishing in the fridge, so I peeled (where necessary) and diced one sweet potato, one huge carrot, one courgette, and a big leek.  Cooked them down in some olive oil to start them off.  There was so much veg that one tubful went into the freezer, which will be nice the next time I’m making soup.

Then in went the chicken stock, some cracked wheat (which I bought by mistake instead of barley), seasoning, and as a final flourish the last of the gravy from Monday’s roast duck, nicely flavoured with cider, and thickened with arrowroot.

Topped up with water, and cooked it slowly the next morning for 3 hours, before devouring some for lunch.  There’s enough there to do at least four days, if not more.  A chicken is a wondrous thing :)

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