Recipe: Chicken, mushroom and bacon pie (Nigella Lawson)

Since I do not have much luck with Nigella's baking recipes, I decided to try a savoury dish this time. I searched "chicken" and the top result was this chicken, mushroom and bacon pie. The photo was so enticing, and I had all the ingredients (except the Marsala which I decided to omit) so this was what I made for lunch one afternoon.

Everything went smoothly, until it was time to seal the pie pots with the puff pastry. You see, I usually use the 10-cm square puff pastries (I find them good and also a handy size to have) but unfortunately for me, the ramekin I was using was also about 10cm, which meant I couldn't seal them properly. The puff pastry keep falling down into the ramekin, so I improvised and just cooked the puff pastry on its own in the oven then top it on the ramekin after.

This was indeed a comforting dish, flavorful pieces of chicken with a thick gravy and rich, buttery and flaky puff pastry - can't really go wrong with this! :) One of the easiest "pies" to make too.

Baby C says "YUMMY!"

Chicken, mushroom and bacon pie
Recipe adapted from Nigella.com
Preparation time: 5-10 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Serves 2

Ingredients
3 rashers streaky bacon(abt 60g), cut into 1 inch strips
1 teaspoon garlic infused olive oil
125g grey oyster mushrooms, sliced
200g chicken thigh fillets, cut into small chunks
25g plain flour
½ tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp butter
300 ml hot chicken stock
375 grams all-butter ready-rolled puff pastry sheet (23 x 40cm / 9½ x 9½
inch)


1. Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan-assisted).

2. In a heavy-based frying pan, fry the streaky bacon strips in the oil until beginning to crisp, then add the
sliced mushrooms and soften them in the pan with the streaky bacon.

3. Place flour and thyme on a plate (or a freezer bag), then toss the chicken strips in it to coat it. Then melt the butter in the streaky bacon-and-mushroom pan before adding the floury chicken and all the flour left in the bag. Stir around with the streaky bacon and mushrooms until the chicken begins to colour. Pour in the hot stock, stirring to form a sauce, and let this bubble away for about 5 minutes.

4. Take two 300ml / 1¼ cup pie-pots (if yours are deeper, don't worry, there will simply be more space between contents and puff pastry top) and make a pastry rim for each one - by this I mean an approx. 1cm / ½ inch strip curled around the top of each pot. Dampen the edges with a little water to make the pastry stick.
Cut a circle bigger than the top of each pie-pot for the lid, and then divide the chicken filling between the two pots. Dampen the rim of the pastry again and then pop on the lid of each pie, sealing the edges with your fingers or the underneath of the prongs of a fork.

5. Cook the pies for about 15 minutes turning them around halfway through cooking. Once cooked, they should have puffed up magnificently.

Note: If you do not have garlic infused olive oil, just use regular extra virgin olive oil and add 1 crushed garlic to it.

*I am submitting this to the "Cook Like a Star" event (Nigella Lawson) event hosted by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Anuja from Simple Baking. Visit any of the host's blog and link your Nigella recipes there.


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