I had about half a bird’s worth of meat from last week’s roast chicken.  A post on a binaries newsgroup featured a tasty-looking pot pie and that inspired me to shift from chow mein to pot pie to use up the leftover chicken.

Another reason I wanted to do the pot pie was because I had in my refrigerator a Pillsbury All-Ready pie crust that needed to be used.  My inquiry of “my people” online was just about unanimous that if I was going to make a one-crust pot pie, the crust should be on the top and not as a liner in a pie plate. 

Poking around the net for a chicken pot pie recipe was interesting in a sad kind of way.  Every one of the early Google hits involved at least one, if not two, canned condensed cream soups.  I ruled out the use of canned cream soup because I am confident that I can make that kind of thing better than Campbell’s can.  That I had about 1-1/2 cups of leftover chicken gravy also played a part.  In the end, I winged it (wung it?).  I made it up as I went along.

First thing I did was slice about 5 baby carrot thingies and nuke them (in a covered dish with about a tablespoon of water) for about 2 minutes.

While they were cooking, I sliced about 5 mushrooms and minced a shallot.

  They went into a couple tablespoons of butter in a skillet on the stove for a couple minutes, then into the deep dish pie plate I had identified for baking this dish.  My initial thought was to leave the mushrooms and shallot in the skillet and add the flour to it and make a thick sauce that way, using some homemade chicken broth that also needed to be used.  I changed my mind about that and removed them to the baking dish.

I made sauce with a roux of a couple tablespoons of butter and some flour and the 3/4 cup of chicken broth.  Into that went some frozen peas, a handful of frozen corn, and the mushrooms and shallots and about half a chicken breast, cut into maybe 3/4” pieces.  This is when some of my leftover chicken gravy came to the party – I added maybe 3/4 cup.    That mixture went into the baking dish.

My next move was to unroll my pie crust and cut a circle from it to lay atop my hot chicken stuff.  It was a little small and I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not so I found a leetle jar and cut leetle pastry circles to put around the edge.  I brushed it all with some evaporated milk that was in the fridge and needed to be used.  Can you spot a trend here? I popped it into a 425° oven.  About 15 minutes later I looked and it looked all limp white, not so tempting.

Another 15 minutes and things had improved — that part of the crust that was visible was nice and brown; the gravy had bubbled up (duh) and covered the nice little pastry circles – so much for a crispy browned top crust.  It seemed like a good idea at the time I did it. . . .

It was delicious.  Rob carried on about its yumminess and I simply kept repeating, “Don’t expect this to replace Marie Callender.”  (Marie’s pot pie is his fallback when I’m away at suppertime.)

Next time I do this I will make sure the crust fits more like a regular top crust with a crimped edge.  I do a nice crimped edge.