Chicken and Vegetable ‘Punk’ Pie

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Here’s a great one I came up with over the weekend, it’s named Punk Pie as I used Brewdog Punk IPA, but really any IPA will work in the recipe.  You’ll need the following (and a couple of hours)

For the pastry –

  • 350g of plain flour
  • 200g of butter (or anything suitable for baking, as you can see I used Vitalite)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg to glaze

For the filling –

  • 2 good sized onions, red or white will do
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 (325ml) bottle of Punk IPA, or the IPA of your choice
  • 1.5 chicken stock cubes, or enough to make roughly 635ml of stock, more or less to taste
  • 800g chicken thighs and legs
  • A few handfuls of frozen peas
  • 4 or so carrots
  • A couple of tbsp of flour for thickening
  • 200ml of water
  • A pinch of sugar (to taste)
  • A couple of pinches of tarragon
  • A few handfuls of grated cheese
  • Pepper

You’ll also need a mixing bowl, a casserole dish or oven proof pan (with a lid) and a 30cm pie dish

Okay, to begin with you’ll want to start working on the pie filling – begin by removing all of the skin and fat from your chicken, or as much as you can.  I chopped the bones in the legs to make removing the skin a little easier.  Something like this is fine

Now take your casserole dish or oven proof pan and place on a medium-high heat with a little vegetable oil in and, in batches, begin to brown the chicken.  Be careful as the remaining skin may make it spit all over the place.  You can place the lid half on to stop it making too much of a mess, just make sure all of it’s getting a bit browned.  The aim at this stage is just to cook to impart more flavour, not to cook all the way through so don’t worry if it’s still raw in the middle.  Whilst it’s browning, begin chopping the onion and veg, there’s no particular consistency you’re aiming for really

This is about the level of browning you should aim for

Once you have all of your chicken browned, place it in a separate bowl and return the pan to the heat and DO NOT wash that pan!  Even if there are bits stuck to the bottom of the pan you should keep them there.  Those stuck, browned bits = flavour.  Now add a bit more oil and throw in the onions and garlic and cook until just a little browned.  Once that’s done, throw that chicken and any juices that may have run out back in and add the key ingredient, the beer!

You may want to buy an extra bottle or two for yourself to drink whilst cooking

Now add your 1.5 chicken stock cubes, carrots and 200ml of water along with a generous amount of black pepper

Then place the pan, covered, into an oven at 160C on the bottom shelf for an hour.  Now that’s done you can begin working on the pastry.  Measure out the 350g of flour and add 200g of butter and using your fingertips, work it to a breadcrumb type consistency.  ONLY use your fingertips, if you try to use the palms of your hands the extra heat can melt the butter and screw everything up.  Carry on pinching and rubbing the butter through until it looks like this –

Now you’ll want to add that egg in there and knead it into the mixture until it forms a ball

You can put the dough into a sandwich bag and stick it in the fridge until you need it.  After an hour’s up, remove your pan from the oven and remove the chicken and place on a chopping board to cool.  Then add a couple of pinches of tarragon to the pan along with a pinch or two of sugar and your frozen peas.  The sugar is really to taste – keep tasting the mixture, if it tastes good to you then you may not need to add any.  Now mix a couple of tablespoons of flour with a little cold water and work into a smooth paste (smooooooth is the key) and add to the pan to thicken the mixture.  Now turn your attention to that chicken

Omnomnom? NOT YET!

Using your hands, tear up that chicken taking great care to remove any bones, fat and cartilage from it and return it all to your pan and stir through.  You should be left with something that looks like this –

At this point you want the mixture to cool as much as possible, I just put the lid on the pan and left it outside.  Now you’re going to start on the pie base. Take 2/3 of the dough and roll out into a circle at about the thickness of a pound coin and place into a greased pie dish.  Then take the rest of the dough and roll into a lid for your pie.  Once the mixture has cooled, fill the pie base with as much as you can and cover in a decent amount of grated cheese and place the pie lid over the the top, crimping the edges of the dough together and trimming off the excess dough.  Then take the final egg, whisk it and brush over the pie lid and add a couple of holes to let the steam vent out.  FInally, place the pie on the middle shelf of a pre-heated oven at 200C for 35 minutes until nice and golden brown.  If you’ve done it right, you should end up with something looking like this once you’ve turned it out of the dish

And one more, just because it’s tasty as hell

Like a boss

This will feed four hungry, hungry people with some veggies thrown on the side.  It also keeps in the fridge very well for a few days and tastes great cold too.  Enjoy!