Recipe number 5.

Man, writing these posts is hard. Especially when the food turns out so gorgeous that it’s the only thing you can think about. Rinse and repeat that for 5 days, and you get what happened with this post. I know you’ve all been eagerly waiting for it, so hold tight.

I’m genuinely running out of words to describe the food I’ve been cooking from the book. It just feels foolish using the same words over and over again, but needs must.

This dish though. Oh man, this dish. This pie takes me back to school, the chicken and vegetable pie that broke my 1-day streak of vegetarianism (I was weak). The pie that I would wait ‘til the end of lunch for so I could get a bigger portion, but most importantly - get the corner piece. This pie just takes me back to those days, those carefree days. Days when the only thing that mattered was A-Levels or GCSEs. Simple days.

Needless to say - this pie was beyond beautiful. It was just decadent. It wasn’t complex or fancy or anything and that’s where the beauty lies - in it’s simple, creamy, child-like deliciousness.

Onto the recipe itself.

I struggled to collate almost everything for this and had to make a substitution. So, celeriac (celery root) just wasn’t sold in any of the Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s local, because what student buys celeriac? I’d never even eaten it before. So I trudged to the big Sainsbury’s only to find out that they had sold out. Dammit. Looking up substitutions led me to options of turnips, sweet potato, celery and parsley root. I decided to just go with turnips, I’d never had it and it looked interesting.

The other issue I had with this recipe was the “Dry Sherry” - specifically how little of it I needed, and the fact that no shop sells small bottles of it. So for 50ml of Sherry I had to buy 750ml of the stuff. I don’t understand, I’ve seen other recipes call for tablespoons of the stuff. Who has that kind of money to spend? Alas, I caved and bought it to use, just for you guys. Everything else was fairly simple to find and get so no bother.

Prep and cooking

I’d love to say prep was easy, but butternut squash was involved. I know I’ve complained in other posts about anchovies or olives or something, but butternut squash is just another beast in itself. The stuff is hard as a rock, even when I took my cleaver to it. Chef Ramsay instructs you to peel it with a vegetable peeler, but after trying for about a second, seeing how my peeler wasn’t going to cope and how it had contorted itself, I resigned and cooked it with skin on. Turned out absolutely fine so no complaints. Everything else though was very easy to prep.

Cooking was ridiculously simple. I mean I spent ages cooking, but that’s purely because I’m slow. The recipe calls for cooked chicken - so I just roasted some chicken in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, tore it off the bone, cubed and basically finished the cooking process in the sauce.

The puff pastry I got ready rolled and frozen from Sainsbury’s and oh man was it good raw. Oh god was it amazing baked. Oh so buttery and delicate and airy mmm.

Before

After

There really isn’t much complicated in this recipe to talk about, it was fairly simple as far as cooking goes, just a fair amount of waiting around.

**Taste**

Like I said at the beginning, this brings back memories of school pie, which was no bad thing. This was simply gorgeous. A thick, creamy sauce that just fills your mouth. The mix of soft chicken and now soft butternut squash and turnips add a hint of sweetness to the whole thing, and the pastry round adding a delicate, buttery texture to the whole thing. It was divine. After the first day I started using the pastry round similar to bread, scooping up bits of chicken and sauce, it was phenomenal.

****

Verdict

I happily ate this for 5 days in a row. So much so that I’m making it again tonight and will likely be having it for the week to come. It was that good. I learnt you can’t reheat the pastry rounds, but if I put them on top of the reheated chicken mixture it would heat through somewhat without collapsing.

I feel like this is going to be one of those recipes that I make consistently, until one day I just get sick of it. But until that day I am just going to keep eating and eating it.