Chicken Pot Pie

It has been raining non-stop all day. Sometimes it comes down as a torrent, other times it is more of a misty Pacific Northwest type of rainfall. In fact, at this time of year in Costa Rica, where we live in the Central Valley, the weather reminds me of our winter weather in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Everything is so lush and green. It has been long sleeve shirts and long pants weather the last few days, as I find it quite cool. We have been running the ceiling fans in order to keep the air moving and help with indoor dampness.

It is definitely chicken pot pie weather - some good old fashioned hearty comfort food. Click here to see the recipe I followed. For the pastry crust, I also used her pastry recipe, which features a very easy method of incorporating the chilled butter into the flour. Those methods of using a pastry blender or two knives to cut in the butter never did work very well for me.

I made two pies. One is for our dinner tonight and the other went over to Diane and John's house. They are flying home to Costa Rica from a trip to Canada, arriving this evening, so they will have something to nosh on if hungry or they can reheat it tomorrow.

I loaded the pies with spinach, peas, broccoli, carrots, onions and garlic, and lots of chicken. From my own herb garden, I picked rosemary, oregano and tarragon and added those, along with salt, pepper and smoked paprika.

Here is how their pie turned out:

 

Some of the gravy leaked out the top but I think that is not a problem, taste wise. Realize that I have a funny little stove (an Atlas) with four heat selections: high, bake, grill and warm. With trial and error and an oven thermometer, I have learned to preheat the oven on "high", put the baking in the oven, turn to "bake", set a timer and then finish on "grill" if the top needs further browning.