Wednesday 11 January 2012

Chicken, bacon, new potato and asparagus pie

This is a really simple, cheap and tasty dish. The asparagus can be supplemented for other vegetables (spinach, peas and chopped green beans are all good alternatives) or simply leave them out and add the amount of leeks. If you are adding the asparagus, then cook this dish in the early summer months when the English asparagus is available. This serves 6.

You need to make a portion of chicken stock (see techniques) and reserve the flesh.

4 rashers of un-smoked streaky bacon
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 large or 2 medium sized leeks finely sliced
1 onion finely sliced
75g unsalted butter
75g plain flour
Small glass of white wine (preferably something fruity)
12 asparagus stalks
 6 medium sized new potatoes, boiled till cooked, but not soft

Lightly fry a knob of the butter in a small drop of vegetable oil. Sweat the onion for 5 minutes until softened and then add the rest of the butter. When this is melted add the flour a table spoon at a time and keep stirring. When all the flour is incorporated, leave this cooking lightly for another minute. Now slowly add the chicken stock, a ladel at a time. This will solidify the mixture at first, but keep adding and stirring until there is a loose sauce created.

In a separate pan, lightly fry the bacon in a little oil, when it starts lightly crisping add the garlic, cook this for a minute then add the leeks and a lot of black pepper (bacon, leeks and black pepper is one of my favourite flavour combinations.) Keep cooking until the leeks start to soften, then de-glaze the pan with the white wine and reduce to kill the alcohol; now add to the chicken stock, making sure to scrape all of the pan.

Add the chicken to this  mixture and slowly warm through. Heat a griddle pan, then griddle the asparagus to give some good char marks, but retains some bite (this can be done under the grill, just don't soften  too much.) The asparagus can then be added to the chicken and finished with a few more minutes cooking. Now check the salt levels, the bacon will naturally add its own salt, so this should be done at the end. For extra richness you can also add cream at this stage, although it's not a necessity.

To finish the dish, pre-heat a grill, transfer the chicken mixture to an oven proof dish, slice the new potatoes length ways, overlap on top of the dish until it covers the mixture, then season and smear on softened butter. Now place under the grill until the potatoes brown.

This is a full meal in itself, just needs some bread and the rest of the wine to enjoy.