Chicken Stroganoff Lattice Pie

When hectic schedule prevails and life gets that much harder, I love to escape into my la la land. With magical landscape and a country house, fully occupied with an Aga and wooden floors. The typical elaborate meals would be served in a rustic kitchen, with the sweet smell of lavender and buttercups in the backyard. Nothing better to sums up the mood than making something extraordinaire..like lattice pies, weaved with love and precision.

Then reality bites. I would still be in my modern kitchen, fully equipped, yes, but there is no sight of Aga or buttercups. In not so recent past, I almost followed my heart's desire and almost purchased an Aga before I realise that it will not be suitable for the house, nor the bill. I would just relent and make my lattice pie anyway because that is what I would do best for right now.

This lattice pie is my pièce de résistance on those wishful days that I hope I am living in a village in South of France, with a bustling household that come around together for a family meal. Everything will be done from scratch. The shortcrust pasty. Beautiful chicken filling spiced up and mushroomy. Hours of preparation will be well worth it with the first bite of crusty, savoury pie.

Oh, I must mention, this is my twist to the original Stroganoff. During my uni days, we made do with whatever ingredients we had at hand, and amazingly using cream of mushroom soup made the filling taste much more delicious. What started off as  a survival experiment has become one of my best kept secret recipes. Well not so secret anymore eh, as I am sharing it with all of you;-)

Hopefully the pictorials would show how easy it is to make the shortcrust pastry..so let's start cooking!

Chicken Stroganoff Lattice Pie

For shortcrust pastry
320g plain flour
150g butter-kept in the fridge
4 tbsp ice cold water
1 egg yolk

For the filling
1 medium sized chicken breast-washed and cubed
1 can of cream of Mushroom soup ( I use Heinz)
1 green onion-diced
1 tomato-cubed
1 bell pepper-cubed
juice from 1 lemon
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp dried thymes
1/2 tsp oregano
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp minced ginger-garlic paste
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp ground coriander
1/2 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp coarse ground pepper
a pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar

Method

Prepare the shortcrust pastry. Put all the flour in a large mixing bowl. Rub in the cubed cold butter until crumbs are formed, add in the cold water and egg yolk and knead until it forms a dough. The dough should not stick to the bowl. Wrap the dough in a clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 1 hour whilst the filling is prepared.

Prepare the filling.
1. Heat the olive oil in a wok. Add in the diced onions, ginger-garlic. Fry until they are fragrant and golden. Add in the chicken cubes and fry for few more minutes.
2. Mix all the ground spices with few spoonful of water to form a paste and add into the wok. Well coat the chicken with the spices. Add the bay leaves, thymes and oregano at this point. Add the tomato, diced pepper, lemon juice and mushroom soup. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
3. Season with sugar and salt. Now the filling is ready.

Assembling the lattice pie

Tke out the pastry dough from the refrigerator and  divide into 2 balls. Place one ball in between 2 cling film or parchment paper to ease rolling. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a circle shape with 1 inch thickness, befitting your preferred pie pan. The rolled dough should cover the bottom and the edge of your pan. Pierce the dough with fork all over.

Pour the baking beans on top and bake the pastry for 20 minutes at 170C.

 Remove the beans and bake it for another 5 minutes. Let the pastry cool a bit before adding the filling.

 Now prepare the weaving lattice. Roll the remaining ball of dough in between cling film until it forms a rectanggle of 1 inch thickness. Using a sharp knife, cut the rectangle into strips of about half inch diameter. Form T-cross from the middle and weave the lattice to cover the whole pie.

 Brush the top with egg wash (mix 1 egg with 2 tsp water) and bake for another 25 minutes at 170C or until the top is golden brown.

Serve warm with salad as accompaniment. Bon appetit!

Sending this recipe to Jabeen's Iftar Nights and Lubna's Joy from Fasting to Feasting.

Toffee Profiteroles with Chantilly Cream

If you live in London and love a bit of window shopping, I bet you would have come across Caffe Concerto on Regent Street with its stunning window display. Every time I walk past this Italian Brasserie, I just had to stop, gawk and be stunned..the arrays of desserts with towers and towers of gold leaf decorated profiteroles, wedding cakes with fancy chocolate plastiques and bouquet of fresh flowers between the multiple tiers are such a showstopper. With upcoming loved ones' birthdays around the corner, I actually went in to the cafe recently to find out if they could do a mini profiteroles tower for me. No, not for weddings I say, just a small family function. 

I was quoted a £600 for a profiterole tower (!!!), in a very casual tone, "It comes with golden leaves, Madame".  This obviously took me aback and I had to decline placing an order on this occassion. All the  way back home, all I could think was how could such an easy choux pastry tower be that expensive, even with the fancy schmancy gold leaf? Better be a 24 carat leaf then, heh.

Few weeks later, engrossed in one of my baking moments, or shall I say pastry moments, I decided to make the profiteroles myself. Not with the fancy schmancy gold obvously, and not that towering either for just the two three of us, but fancy enough that I even made the Chantilly cream and toffee sauce to go with it. Usually profiteroles are drizzled with chocolate sauce but I thought,  let's do it differently this time.

They turned out nice, More than nice. Perfect! Soft, airy and hollow inside. So I get to keep my £600. (seriously, I wouldn't even dream of spending that much money on profiteroles even if I am a billionaire!). Anyways, few friends of mine are intimidated by choux pastry making. It is actually very do-able. The tip to perfect choux, in my humble opinion, lies on few important factors:

• Get a digital scale for accurate measurements of the ingredients
• Open the oven door few times whilst the puffs are being baked. 1 know it contradicts the ancient rule of baking of do not open the oven door until cake is cooked..but trust me, it works better on choux pastry if you let the steam out once in a while
• I always turn around my tray half way during baking to get an even temperature throughout on those lil balls, and I love my fan oven.
• Cool the choux immediately on rack before filling them with cream

If you fancy some pipings and too scared to practice on big celebratory cakes, now is the time to get those nozzles out and play around on this pastry, and trust me, you will be proud of yourself with the end results.

Toffee Profiteroles with Chantilly Cream

50g butter

70g plain flour

80 mls water

2 eggs

Chantilly Cream

300mls double cream

2 tbsp icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Toffee Sauce

50g butter

50g brown sugar

2 tbsp double cream

1 tbsp golden syrup

Method

Whisk the eggs with a fork and take out a couple of tablespoon of the egg aside for egg wash later.

In a pan, boil the butter and water together. Once simmered, remove from heat and add in the flour and quickly form a ball using wooden spatula. Transfer to a bowl. On medium speed, using an electric mixer, beat the dough whilst gradually adding in the eggs. Keep beating until the batter is stringy.

Spoon all the batter into a piping bag and using a round nozzle, pipe the dough into 1 inch balls.  Mix the remaining egg with a couple of water, and brush the top of the dough balls with the egg wash.

Bake for 20 minutes at 180C, turning the tray around half way during baking. Once golden, cool the profiteroles on wire rack.

Prepare the chantilly cream. Using electric mixer, beat the cream and gradually add in the icing sugar and vanilla. Beat until soft peaks are formed. Cool the cream in the fridge until just prior to use.

Prepare the toffee sauce. In a heavy bottomed pan, add all the ingredients and let it simmer and thicken slightly. Remove from heat and the sauce is ready to be drizzled.

Assembling the profiteroles

Once cooled, fill a piping back with cream and using round nozzle size no 2 (Wilton), inject the cream into the profiterole and stack the profiteroles on a plate. Drizzle with the toffee sauce.

Note: This recipe goes to Jabeen's Corner for Iftar Nights event.