Pencil and Fork

Comfort food’s a funny thing: everyone’s got their own take on it. I can understand counting sweet things as comfort food, or starchy dishes like pasta. I’ve always found it strange though that some people describe dishes like stews or casseroles as comfort food. I suppose it often has to do with what we associate with childhood, or home. For me, this is comfort food: the chicken and cheese pie (or turkey and cheese, depending on the season) that my mum always used to make. The recipe is adapted from one in All in One Cook Book by Stork & Oxo. I like to use a mixture of shortcrust and puff pastry; shortcrust on the bottom/sides of the pie, and puff pastry on the top. I especially love it when the puff pastry that’s in contact with the pie filling gets a bit soggy!

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 25 g butter
• 1 onion
• 25 g plain flour
• 200 ml chicken stock
• 5 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp mustard powder
• 50 g cheddar cheese
• 175-225 g cooked chicken
• 175 g pastry (I use half shortcrust, half puff)
• salt and pepper

Dice the onion and heat it in gently in the butter so that it softens but doesn’t colour.

Add the flour, milk and chicken stock. Turn up the heat and let it thicken for about 3 minutes, whisking it. Season with salt and pepper and add the mustard powder. Let it continue to thicken for another couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, grate the cheddar cheese. Add the cheese to the sauce and let it melt. Add the chopped chicken and let the whole mix cool.

Roll out the shortcrust pastry and line a pie dish. Put the cooled chicken pie filling in the pie dish. Roll out the puff pastry and cover the pie with it. Bake the pie at 220 for 20 minutes and then at 180 for a further 20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. The pie can be eaten hot or cold.

The shortcrust pastry I used was Michel Roux’s flan pastry.