Monday Night Dinner: Autumn Pot Pie

Sigh. There will be no boasting of success in the kitchen this time. Nothing catastrophic, but a couple rather noteworthy mistakes. Firstly, I (again) grossly underestimated how long it would take. I beat my previous late dinner record by almost 10 minutes. This time dinner was served at the tummy-grumbling time of 8:39. Woot? Not sure how I convinced myself that this recipe was a good choice for a mid-week cooking attempt. And secondly? Well, read on...

But first, I should mention that I had great success on the weekend, which I attribute to having more time to get an early start on things. I made a delicious corn chowder on the fly, substituting sweet potatoes for regular potatoes, and adding a few extra veggies, like the slightly wilting kale and mushrooms I had in the fridge; with tea biscuits (my dad's recipe, which I'll share in another post sometime). Hearty and delicious! And then I made some yummy oatmeal-dark-chocolate-chunk cookies for a super-fun SuperBowl party we went to (Thanks J&C!).


Anyway, back to the Pot Pie. I've had this Autumn Pot Pie recipe for many years—not sure where it came from—it's written near the front of my scrappy recipe notebook, which dates it to around 2005. Here's an online copy that appears to be the same.

I found I had to nearly triple the amount of water suggested for the crust. Even after chilling in the fridge it was still really crumbly, and I kept sprinkling water on it, trying to bind it. I did what I could, and wasn't overly upset about it, just a bit surprised. Let's just pretend I was going for thick, rustic crust.

After it was in the oven, I was telling Mark about it, and trying to figure out why it was so dry and wouldn't hold together, he asked how much flour the recipe called for, and I said "just a cup—" (big pause) "oooooooooohhh," (looking at the 2-cup measure which I stupidly used as a 1-cup measure) "oooooooooohhh. Riiiiiight... that explains it." So, if you use your measuring tools properly, which I did not, it will probably turn out just fine. And the ginger and lemon in the crust would probably stand out more. The filling was fine, but let's be honest, it was the crust I was looking forward to, not the veggies and the chicken.

Anyway, far from a disaster, just not as good as I'd hoped. But it was great fun peeling the pearl onions! After their skins were softened by boiling for a few seconds, I found the easiest way of peeling them was to cut the stubby end off, squeeze the other end, and the lovely pale pearl comes shooting out like a slimy alien baby. Neat!