Chicken & Mushroom Pie

Today I experimented with pie making. I wanted to try and make a Chicken and Mushroom Pie from scratch. After reading up about pie making online and also consulting my cousin Amelia on how to go about making shortcrust pastry, join me as I show you how I made my first chicken and mushroom pie from scratch.

Firstly, I'm going to make the shortcrust pastry. It's rather simple to make actually. All you need is 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of butter and some ice water.

Rub the butter into the flour. Make sure that the butter is still cold. When the texture feels something like breadcrumbs, you know it's ready. This is also what you use to make the topping for apple crumble.

Add in a few teaspoons of cold water, bit by bit until you can form a round dough ball. Do not kneed it. Just gently pat it into a ball. Remember not to add in too much water.

Wrap the dough ball in cling wrap and put it in the fridge. This is to keep it cool. When the dough gets hot, it becomes mushy and it's really hard to work with it.

Next, I'm going to make the filling for the pie. I would need some skinless chicken pieces ( I pre marinated the chicken with some soy sauce earlier), one potato chopped up in small pieces, one chopped up onion, mix vegetables and sliced baby portabella mushrooms (any type of button mushroom is fine).

Melt some butter in a pan and add in the onions. Stir fry it a little until it's fragrant.

Add in the chicken pieces. Continue frying.

Once the chicken is about half cooked, add in the potatoes and mushrooms. You can add in a few teaspoons of water if needed.

When it's almost done, add in the mix vegetables. Continue cooking.

As soon as everything is cooked, add in a can of mushroom soup. Mix it evenly with the other ingredients. Add in a few teaspoons of milk, not too much. Let it continue to cook for about 1 minute.

Turn off the heat and crack in some black pepper. The filling is done! Let it sit and cool thoroughly before moving on to the next step.

Now its time to assemble the pie! Remove the shortcrust pastry dough from the fridge. If it's too hard, allow it to warm up for a bit...not too long though. Put it on a piece of wax paper that is dusted with flour. This is to make sure it doesn't stick.

Put another piece of wax paper over it and start to roll it out with a rolling pin. I have to admit I didn't have a rolling pin, so I used a wine bottle instead (that I have a lot :P). Works pretty good too.

Spray on some non stick cooking oil on the pie pan. Then, transfer the rolled out pastry dough to the pan. Press is down gently and poke some holes at the base with a fork.

Fill the pie with the chicken and mushroom filling. Pack it down gently with a spatula.

Repeat the step of rolling out the pastry dough for the top of the pie. Cover it and press the top over the bottom pastry. Trim off the excess pastry. Crimp all around the edges of the pie so that it doesn't open up during baking.

Spread egg wash all over the top of the pie and cut slits to allow the air to escape when baking.

Use a pie shield to cover the edges of the pie to prevent it from over baking. Since I do not have a pie shield, I used aluminium foil instead. Remember to use non stick aluminium foil or spray on some non stick oil before covering it.

Put it in a 400F oven and set the timer for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, take out the pie to remove the aluminium foil. Put it back in for another 20 minutes. Allow the pie to cool before cutting. The whole house just smelled of chicken pie while it was baking...such a nice smell! The crust was a bit too flaky but I think it turned out pretty good for a first try. I think I will try to make one with frozen shortcrust pastry that I can buy premade from the supermarket and see how that turns out. Anybody knows how to solve the flaky crust problem?