Pantry pot pie

There are a few things that I always, or at least almost always, have on hand: onions, potatoes, carrots, and frozen peas. Add some stuff I happened to have this time...turnips and cabbage...and you have yourself a really yummy vegetable pot pie.

I started with Mark Bittman's pie crust from "How to Cook Everything":


1 1/8 c flour
1 stick unsalted butter (since I only had salted butter on hand, I used that and nixed the salt)
1/8 t salt


Whirl in the food processor until the texture of corn meal (about 10-15 sec).

Dump out into a bowl and add 4 Tbsp cold water. Use a spatula to bring everything together the best you can and then dump onto plastic wrap. Cover with another sheet of plastic wrap, and put into a flat ball. It will be REALLY crumbly...it might not even hold together well. That's okay. It will be the most flaky pie crust you've ever had. Put into the freezer for 10 min and then roll out between the plastic wrap. Turn out into pie crust. If yours falls apart like mine always does, just patch it up. No big deal.


To make a double crust pie, do the above twice.


For the filling, I chopped up a medium onion, a hand full of baby carrots (that's what I had), a potato, a turnip, a bit of cabbage, and about a half handful of chopped herbs. I also included some thawed frozen peas. For the sauce, I sauteed about 1 1/2 T butter with 2 T flour and some red pepper flakes. Then I added 1 c chicken stock and somewhere between 1/2 and 1 c half and half and cooked the mixture until it thickened.

Of course, the sauce and filling goes in between the pie crusts. I vaguely remember that maybe I was supposed to cook one crust for a bit before I filled it, but I didn't. I cooked the whole thing for an 50 min at 350 degrees and then an additional 15 min at 425 degrees until the top was nicely browned (thank you, butter!).




Oh yeah. Flour with butter...with veggies with butter and flour and cream. :) I have a weakness for pot pie, and this was the best one I've ever had.





Just look at this flaky crust!


I served it with an extra portion of salad to make me feel better.

Pasties revisited

The recipe in my very first post on this blog was for pasties (savory hand pies). That time I used a recipe from Alton Brown for the dough and filled half of them with leftover corned beef and cabbage and half of them with potatoes, turnips, carrots, and onions. They were fantastic. I've been wanting to make them again ever since.

Spurred on by a Paula Dean recipe for apple handpies, I decided to take a shortcut this time. Instead of making the dough myself, I used refrigerated biscuit dough which I rolled very thin. I filled them with chopped butternut squash, turnips, onions, and potatoes (I didn't even use up 1 of each vegetable). Then I baked them for 30 minutes with foil on top for the last 10 minutes so they wouldn't get too brown. You know, they were okay...but they tasted like refrigerator biscuit dough. Next time I'll make them Alton Brown's way again. Sorry Paula.

My occasions

As you may have guessed from the description, this blog is going to be about food.

At least for me, food needs to be truly economical (contrary to what the food network might say, $10 a plate is not economical when you're serving a bunch of people), impressive to the average person, and perfect for the occasion. That's what I like best, occasion cooking (usually I try to keep it safe while getting people to try new things that they would naturally love).

For instance, earlier this summer I had to cook for Mark (my husband), his fam, and Chad (his best friend). They were going to be working all day on an extensive new brick patio at Mark's parent's house, so they needed something hardy. But Mark's mom warned me that Dad doesn't like to take long breaks while he is focused on a task, so it couldn't take a long time to eat. Mark likes meat (I'm sure Chad does too). To Mark "hardy" means meat. Mark's family would prefer not to eat meat (they are mostly vegetarian). In fact, hardy for them might mean a huge salad with beans. So what do I serve?

As you can see, the blog will really be about my life and the events of my life but also the food I cook to go along with those events and those people who will be eating it.

In case you are wondering, after hours of thought (cause that's what I do) I decided to serve pasties (savory hand pies.) and a basic greens salad. The pasties were perfect, if I do say so myself.

I used this recipe only I used half whole wheat, half white flour. I also doubled the recipe...it made almost 30...we ate them all (5 adults, 2 kids). I was hoping to have leftovers because I know that they freeze well, and my oven is out of order (I made them at the fam's house). Oh well. Everyone was very hungry.
Instead of rolling out all the dough really thin, the recipe recommended rolling the dough thick (1/2 inch) and cutting 2 1/2 inch circles (I don't have cookie cutters so I used a small juice glass) and then rolling them thin one by one as you fill them. That method worked really well for me (and I'm terrible at rolling out dough). It also helped that the dough isn't crumbly and delicate like normal pastry dough...it has baking powder in it, and you actually kneed it.

I filled some with leftovers of corned beef and cabbage (with potatoes and carrots) that I had at a Irish pub the night before and some with potatoes, carrots, and turnips (raw with half a small onion, minced and salt and pepper...no liquid). I liked the vegetarian ones best. The turnips gave them a really good flavor. In short, they were fantastic...not as much work as I was expecting... very economical (1 potato, 1 turnip, and 1 carrot made almost a whole batch)...and very impressive. I'll have to make these again when my oven get's fixed (it's been broken since March).