Curry Chicken Pot Pie {Made Without Cream!}

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

This chicken pot pie is delicious but also chock full of vegetables with carrot, zucchini, peas and corn which makes it a complete meal with 4 cups of vegetables per pie! It's also creamy but made without any cream at all! The filling has a touch of curry flavour to supercharge it with flavour! This is a pushy recipe Dear Reader!

A chicken pot pie is an easy pie because it can be made with just a top layer of pastry. It's a creamy chicken filling with vegetables and is comfort food personified. It's also a nice meal to share for Mother's Day or to deliver to your mother!

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

I like meals to be a complete meal so I tend to pile them thick with vegetables. This has lots of vegetables-4 cups worth in fact not including onions and garlic. Although this pie can technically feed 4 or 4 especially when paired with salad, this gave us two meals mainly because it was so delicious we both went for seconds so that's just a little warning about its moreishness!

Creamy but no cream! I didn't have any cream in the fridge so I made this using a roux. A roux is a mixture of melted butter and flour that is cooked and then you add milk to become a creamy, velvety white sauce simulating a cream sauce but without cream. It is the base for a bechamel sauce and other creamy white sauces. I always use whole full cream milk because I hate skim milk and I would avoid using skim milk although in a pinch it will do.

Other vegetables that work: You want 4 cups of cubed vegetables and this can also include any of these vegetables: pumpkin, sweet potato, celery, green beans, chickpeas, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms and potatoes. Even tinned beans work!

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

Make your puff pastry super puffy! Make sure to cool the filling completely before covering in pastry. Puff pastry works best when it is very cold and then it is placed in a very hot oven and this change in temperature helps to create the puffy, buttery layers. Putting cold puff pastry on top of hot filling will prevent this rise from occurring as the pastry get hot and the butter melts so you will need to cool the filling first. OR you can make the filling the day before (the filling can be made 3 days ahead of time).

Which curry powder? I get asked this a lot because not all curry powders are the same. I use Baba's Meat Curry Powder. It is sold at Asian grocery stores in a large bag but it's very fresh and potent with aroma and flavour.

Chicken alternatives: I have done this with very lean turkey breast and it is still tender and a great use of what could be a dry cut of meat. You could also make this entirely of vegetables too (see above vegetable list).

Healthy options: If you're trying to make it a bit healthier omit the puff pastry top and try serving this with steamed brown rice, konjac noodles or zoodles. This also cuts down on the cooling time and you can just cook this all in the saucepan.

I saved this recipe for when I had a lot of vegetables that needed using and I took the meat out of the freezer. Usually I rarely put meat in the freezer and buy it fresh but I'm limiting the amount of supermarket shops I do to once weekly.

I also somewhat foolishly embarked on another conquest which made use of some rather precious ingredients. I tried to make the perfect custard tart. To me, a gorgeous custard tart dusted with nutmeg is the perfect thing to ne, not to mention nostalgic. When a friend told me that she had a chef friend's amazing custard tart and she shared it with me I was very excited. I've had this custard tart and it's truly amazing, most of Sydney has fallen in love with it.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

I was somewhat confused. If you've ever seen a chef's raw recipe it can either be strangely detailed in enormous quantities in a spreadsheet or it's the rambling scratchings of a lunatic. Okay I'm half kidding there but chefs write shorthand recipes that must be massaged into a form that the general public can understand (ask any food magazine editor).

This recipe seemed detailed but slightly odd. I was a bit confused by the quantities I was given for the pastry and the custard but I pushed on devoting 11 of my precious eggs to it, three vanilla beans and half a litre of cream and more than that of milk.

I spent all day on it and it turns out that the custard recipe made for 4 times the amount of custard while the pastry recipe made for 1.5 times the pastry. But that was nothing compared to the utterly epic disaster that was this tart. I've made a dozen custard tarts and they've all ranged from decent to very good but I still wanted the very best one ever.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

What it ended up being was the very worst custard tart I've ever made. EVER. The custard was puckered and bubbled (how?) and the whole thing wasn't tasty or looked good. All I needed after that was a bit of a lie down and to lick my wounds...

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever seen a chef's raw recipe before editing? How often do you go grocery shopping nowadays?

Chicken Pot Pie

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An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 30 minutes plus cooling time

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Feeds: 4 people

  • 1 cup/150g/5ozs. diced carrots
  • 2 cups/300g/10ozs. diced zucchini
  • 4 tablespoons/80ml/3flozs. oil
  • 2 onions, peeled and finely diced
  • 50g/1.7ozs butter
  • 4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely diced
  • 2 teaspoons/4g/0.16 oz. curry powder
  • 500g/1.1lbs chicken or turkey meat, thighs or breasts cut into bite sized pieces
  • 2 tablespoons/16g/0.28 oz. flour
  • 1 cup/250ml/8.8flozs. milk (full cream)
  • 1 cup/150g/5ozs. frozen peas
  • 1 cup/175g/6ozs. drained tinned corn
  • 2 sprigs parsley, leaves only, chopped
  • 1/2 cup/50g/1.7ozs. grated parmesan cheese
  • Salt and pepper for seasoning
  • 1 sheet/180g/6ozs. butter puff pastry
  • 2 tablespoons egg wash (egg yolk mixed with 1 teaspoon water)

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

Curry Chicken Pot Pie
Roasted carrots and zucchini

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 180C/350F and line a baking tray with parchment. Place carrots and zucchini on they tray and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of oil and bake for 25 minutes. While it is baking start on the rest of the filling as you will need to set aside time for it to cool.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

Step 2 - Heat the other 2 tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan and add the onions and saute until soft and fragrant. Add a quarter of the butter and add garlic and fry for a minute and add the curry powder and fry for a minute and then add the chicken and saute until cooked - you don't need to brown the chicken, just cook it through.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie
Okay my butter wasn't completely melted but this was forgiving

Step 3 - Then push the chicken to one side of the pan and add the rest of the butter to melt completely. Add the flour to the melted butter to make a roux and mix and then add the milk to the roux and allow to thicken and become creamy. Add the peas, corn, parsley and cheese. When the carrot and zucchini are done add to the mix and season and then allow to cool completely. I often put this in the baking dish to cool and then cover it and pop it in the fridge for the next day when I put the pastry on top.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

Step 4 - Trim a sheet of puff pastry to fit on top of the baking dish. Cut out a hole (I used a chicken cutter) and brush with the egg wash. Place in the fridge while the oven gets to 220C/440F. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

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