My dad and I are meat eaters, so cooking for us is super easy.

With that being said, sometimes I run out of ideas on what to make and tend to feed us curry for an entire week before my dad asks is there anything else to eat, he is tired of curry and rice and all things nice.

That’s when I pull out all the chicken and whip up chicken dishes.

I came across this recipe in one of Mary Berry’s cookbooks.

I very seldom make pies from scratch, I prefer to buy the frozen ones from the store and just popping it in the oven for 30 minutes and pretending I made it when I place it steaming hot on the dinner table.

Seeing as this recipe asked for store bought puff pastry I decided to give it a try, what did I have to loose???

This recipe was really scary in the beginning as the first instruction said, boil an entire chicken till the meat starts to fall off.

I have never boiled a chicken before in my life to make a chicken pie. Normally I would just use a braai pack but seeing as I was going to follow the recipe I might as well do as the recipe instructed.

I was greatly mistaken, the whole boiling of the chicken was pretty simple and it didn’t take that long before the chicken meat was starting to fall off.

I added my own little touches by using the left over pastry and cutting out C’s so that everyone would know it is a chicken pie. Am I not clever.

Ingredients:

• 1 x 1kg chicken.
• Salt and pepper to season.
• 5 ¼ x cups chicken stock.
• 1 x onion, quartered.
• 1 x celery stalk, thickly sliced.
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon.
• 2 x carrots, peeled and chopped.
• 2 x potatoes, peeled and chopped.
• 3 x tbsp. butter.
• 1/3 x cup cake flour.
• 125g x frozen peas.
• 1 x roll store bought puff pastry.
• 1 x egg, whisked for brushing over the pastry.

Method:

• Put the chicken, stock, onion, celery and lemon zest into a large pot.
• Bring the mixture to a boil, cover and allow to simmer for 30 minutes.
• Add the carrots and potatoes, cover and cook for 40 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
• Remove from the heat, remove the chicken and place on a plate to cool.
• Using a slotted spoon, remove all the carrots and potatoes from the mixture.
• Allow the chicken to cool till for about 15 minutes, before shredding the meat.
• Keep the liquid aside.
• In a pot, melt the butter till frothy.
• Whisk in the flour and cook for a minute or so.
• Pour in the lemon juice and 2 ½ cups of the liquid that you kept aside.
• Season and whisk till it starts to thicken.
• Fold in the chicken, vegetables and peas and toss to coat everything nicely.
• Allow the mixture to cool for an hour.
• Pour into a greased pie dish.
• On a floured surface roll out the dough.
• Place the dough over the pie filling.
• Trim off the excess pastry and press down on the edges to seal.
• Make a small air vent in the centre of the pie to allow the steam to escape.
• Brush with the egg.
• Pop into a preheated oven at bake at 180 degrees for 30 – 40 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.