3/9/10 Recipe: Chicken Pot Pie

I haven’t tried this one on Moroccans yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be a hit, unlike most western food – it has nothing they don’t like, and lots of things they do, like meat and pastries.

2-3 C flour

1 C butter or margarine

2 C chicken broth

2 large carrots

1 large onion

1 C peas (canned, frozen, fresh, whatever)

½ kilo chicken, roasted or boiled (produces about 1 cup of cooked meat)

Crust:

Mush together flour and butter in a roughly 2:1 ratio. (For a two-crust pie like this, you want about 2 C flour and 1 C butter.) Add a generous pinch of salt. Combine them, squishing thoroughly between your fingers, until the butter is well-hidden in the dough. Add a splash of water – just enough to incorporate the last crumbles into a sphere of dough.

Split the dough in two. Roll out the first doughball into a nice flat circle. If you don’t have a rolling pin – and out here, really nobody does – you can use a smooth-sided bottle, mug, teacup, etc. Ease the circle into your pie pan. It should cover the bottom and sides.

Press it firmly against the sides of the pie pan.

Cook for a few minutes in a warm oven. (In America, aim for 350. Here, just make sure it’s lit and hot.) When the crust is crispy, pull it out.

Filling:

Heat in a saucepan:

2 C chicken broth

1/3 C flour, made into a roux

In a frying pan, sauté together

2 large carrots, cubed

1 large onion, diced

5 cloves garlic

When they are softened, pour the onion-carrot mix into the chicken broth mixture.

Assembly:

Into your cooked pie crust, layer:

1 C cooked chicken, cubed (or just pulled into thumb-sized bits)

1 C peas

Filling

Top with the remaining half of the dough, rolled into a flat round just large enough to cover the pie with a little bit on the edges to pinch up into a crust.

Cook in your hot (~350, if possible) oven for about half an hour, or until the crust is flakey and the filling is sizzling.

To enjoy it Berber-style, set it in the middle of a small table and attack it from all sides with spoons. (It’s more fun, requires less clean-up, and besides, there’s no neat way to serve it, Western-style.)

Feeds 3-4 hungry people.