Your Pot Pie Sucks.

In 1954, Swanson foods fundamentally altered the American kitchen by introducing the TV dinner. No longer, as the commercials went, would the overworked homemaker be burdened with the laborious task of tending to pots and pans, nor chopping, boiling, or baking. No, all that was needed to satisfy the fat, freckle faced progeny and breadwinning husband was a pre-made and packaged meal. Only a lift of the finger to start the microwave required. And according to the pitch line, no one will be the wiser: the clever housewife cracks a sly grin, knowing the whole family is utterly convinced she slaved for hours to serve them something homemade.

“Homemade” has become the official selling point for everything that is not. Today one can purchase a Bertolli “homemade style lasagna” (Preheat oven to 400, remove plastic wrap, bake for 50 minutes, CAUTION: contents may be hot) made by a fleet of minimum wage immigrant workers at some gruesome factory in Kentucky. Or better yet, there is a new line of microwave meals (Set for 6 minutes at 75 percent power) ironically named after the world’s most published cookbook “The Joy of Cooking” (The original author Irma S. Rombauer, a native St. Louisan and Wash-U grad, must be rolling in her grave). Yet the worst offender of all is the Swanson chicken pot pie: industrial gray sauce; flaccid, tasteless vegetables; soggy, insipid crust. You get what you pay for, as they say, and for two dollars you get a chicken pot pie that is pretty fucking disgusting.

So, after getting my hands on the highly coveted, yet ever sold out Ad Hoc at Home Cookbook, I decided to go all out and make what most likely is the single most difficult and complex chicken pot pie recipe ever.

Chicken Pot Pie by Thomas Keller

--Filling

1 cup 1/2 inch pieces red skin potatoes

1 1/4 cups 1/2 inch pieces carrots (cut on the diagonal)

12 white pearl onions peeled

3 bay leaves

3 thyme sprigs

24 black peppercorns

1 1/4 cups 1/2 inch celery pieces cut on the diagonal

2 cups shredded roast chicken

--Bechamel

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

3 cups whole milk

Kosher salt, to taste

freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon finely chopped flat leaf parsley

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme

pinch of cayenne

1 egg beaten.

Prepare the Dough

Roll out pie dough and place in a 9 to to inch pie pan or cast iron skillet. Place the other piece on a parchment lined sheet pan and refrigerate.

Prepare the vegetables:

Put the potatoes, carrots, and onions in small separate sauce pans. Add 1 bay leaf, a thyme sprig, 8 peppercorns, and a pinch of kosher salt in each. Cover with water and bring to a simmer. Cook until tender, around 8 minutes. Remove vegetables and place on a cooling rack. Bring a large pot of salted water to simmer, add the celery pieces and cook until crisp-tender, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Remove and place in an ice bath.

Make the Bechamel:

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium hear. Whisk in the flour and cook for 3 to 4 minutes until aromatic. Slowly pour in milk in a thin stream, whisking vigorously to incorporate. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, whisking often, until the sauce is reduced to 2 cups, around 30 to 40 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and add the thyme, parsley and cayenne. Season to taste.

Prepare the pie:

Preheat oven to 375. Add the vegetables and chicken to the pie pan in layers, to ensure even distribution. Pour in the bechamel. Cover with the second piece of dough, crimping the edges and mending cracks as needed. Cut a slit in the middle and brush pie with egg wash. Bake on the lower tray for 50 to 60 minutes until the pie is golden brown. If the pie is not beginning to brown after 45 minutes move up to the middle tray. Allow to rest for ten to fifteen minutes.

Basic Pie crust

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 sticks chilled unsalted butter

about 5 tablespoons ice water

Combine the flour and salt in a large ball. Mix in butter, kneading with hands until the butter pieces are about the size of a pea. Add water a few drops at a time and continue kneading until the dough is completely smooth. Divide the dough into two balls, one slightly larger than the other, and roll into a 1 inch thick disk. Refrigerate for at least one hour and up to a day.

Lightly dust the disks with flower and roll into 1/8 inch thick rounds, mending with scrap pieces as necessary. After rolling, refrigerate the rounds for at least ten minutes. Use the larger piece to line the pie pan and the smaller to top.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Many and various are the ways to prepare--and ruin--roast chicken. Julia Child slathers copious amounts of butter inside and out, others prescribe a four hour brine, and that annoying little elf Rachel Ray has no opinion on the matter since it might take longer than 30 minutes.
Nevertheless, good roast chicken has three qualities: crispy skin, juicy meat, and uniform doneness.

Crispy skin: The skin is the most important element of roast chicken; aside from protecting the meat and keeping it moist, it is the most flavorful part. Calorie watchers and other masochists who remove the skin--or worse, eat boneless skinless chicken breasts--have no business eating animals. If chickens are going to be killed for consumption, they at least deserve to be made tasty. But I digress. There are two schools when it comes creating crispy skin: adding lipids and drying the skin. The former is a sleazy tradeoff, because while slathering butter or oil all over the chicken will help to brown the skin, it also creates steam. And steam makes poultry tough and stringy. And that's not ideal. By contrast, drying keeps the meat moist and makes the skin incredibly crispy, almost like cracklings.


Juicy Meat: Roasting generally takes one of two forms: high heat for a short time or low heat for a long time. Meat that is naturally tender--like, say, chicken, fish lean beef and pork, etc.--should be roasted at high heat until just done; otherwise, it will become dry and stringy. Low and slow roasting works best with either large cuts (like a standing rib roast) which take a long time to cook through, or cuts with large amounts of fat and connective tissue which need a long time to break down. Smaller pasture raised chickens (2 1/2 to 3 pounds) and their constituent parts work best for roasting at high heat, as they cook through quickly and have a high skin to flesh ratio.

Uniform Doneness: The biggest problem with roasting any type of poultry is that the dark meat takes longer to cook than the white meat, which often leads to perfectly done legs and thighs and dry, stringy breast meat. Keller recommends trussing as a solution; however, in my experience the problem is simply unavoidable. Furthermore, I find that the dark meat on pasture raised/free range chickens is rather tough and better used for braising.

The solution: As appealing as a darkly browned, whole roasted chicken may be, it will never meet the three criteria for perfect roast chicken. Instead, I use the breasts from a small bird, which are seasoned and dried a day and in advance then roasted at 450 for around 30 minutes. If there's better roasted chicken, I haven't had it.

Roast Chicken with jus


Ingredients:

*Four chicken breasts from two three pound chickens

*Three tablespoons coarse Kosher salt

*Two tablespoons freshly ground black pepper

*Two teaspoons fennel seeds, lightly cracked

* Pinch cayenne

*Several sprigs rosemary and thyme

*Glass of dry white wine

* about a cup or so of chicken stock

*Two tablespoons of unsalted butter

*Champagne or white wine vinegar


Prepare the Chicken: A day in advance, make a rub from the fennel, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Dry the chicken breasts as much as possible with paper towels, and gently insert a tender sprig of thyme underneath the skin. Season generously with the spice mixture, and refrigerate uncovered.

Roasting the Chicken: Preheat the oven to 450 (in most home ovens this will take at least 20 minutes). Place the chicken breasts in a stainless steel pan large enough to allow an inch or so of space between them. Alternatively, use two smaller pans. Insert several cloves of garlic under each breast, and top with a sprig of rosemary (I never put rosemary under the skin, as I feel it overpowers the meat). Roast for around 30 minutes or until the chicken has an internal temperature of 150. Remove chicken to a plate and cover with foil.

Making the Jus: Drain the fat from the roasting pan, reserving the dark brown juices. Place the pan over a med high burner and pour in wine, scraping up the brown bits with a whisk. Reduce wine until almost completely evaporated, then add chicken stock and continue reducing to around 1/3 of a cup (its really important here to use homemade rather than store bought stock. Canned stocks don't have the gelatin necessary to make a thick pan sauce and are usually laden with sodium). Remove the pan from heat, add a drop or two of vinegar, and slowly whisk in the butter. Strain if you feel you must, but I don't think its necessary. Spoon underneath and on top of the chicken.

Serve with a nice buttery Chardonnay, such as Abbey Saint-Hilaire. Enjoy.