Pies: A New December Tradition?

Another cooking weekend. Another dish. And this time, we took to our old recipes for inspiration and settled on the chicken pot pie, a sort of ode to last year's tourtière.

It had been so long since we made pie that Brian–and to a lesser extent, I–had forgotten how much we disliked working with dough.

Pie crust is so hard to nail down; even with Brian's Emeril way of doing things (throwing in extra flour and what have you) or my own Home Ec way of measuring ingredients, it can still be a hit or miss. My brand spanking new pastry cutter helped a little and did end up improving the taste of the crust later on... But it really couldn't account for my rough, ridiculously delicate, and downright unpleasant-looking dough. And while Brian's zeal to get his dough right this year helped with his bottom crust, his top crust could barely hold it together and looked a lot like an aerial shot of Olympic stadium: fully covered but falling apart (his words, not mine).

On the upside, the non-dough part of the pie was spectacular. The rich sauce complemented the chicken as well as the buttery crust. I enjoyed it a lot, though Brian wasn't too big a fan of the amount of celery in the pie.

This chicken pot pie recipe kept us tide over for a good few days: I ate mine for lunch and dinner all the way to Wednesday. :D

Piece out