Oh, how I love Ina Garten.

Also known as ‘The Barefoot Contessa,’ she is, well… she’s just FAB.  I absolutely adore her cooking style and she has influenced mine in such a huge way. She is basically my personal cooking mentor, only we’ve never met and she doesn’t know it. Yet.

Okay. Back to the food. It was an unusually cold weekend a few weeks back (temperatures in the 30′s are unheard of around here – keep in mind people are busting out their gloves and coats when it’s 65) and we’d had plans for a favorite couple to join us for dinner. And like always I had been tooling around with different ideas (we were going to watch football so maybe a homemade pizza party? or what about chili? shouldn’t we be having football-esque foods like chips and dips?) and asking Daniel for input. It was cold, so chili sounded good…but you know what else sounds good when it’s cold out? Chicken pot pie. Well, the second I even muttered the words his mind was made up. Note: this kind of thing comes in handy when I am an indecisive mental patient. Which is pretty much all the time.

Next stop was the Food Network website. I searched those 3 perfect words and guess whose recipe was the first in line?

Chicken Pot Pie

Adapted from Ina Garten

The filling:

• 3 whole (6 split) chicken breasts, bone-in, skin-on
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 5 cups chicken stock (homemade is preferred but who has the time? if you do, I’m jealous)
• 2 chicken bouillon cubes
• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 2 good-sized yellow onions, chopped
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups medium-diced carrots, blanched for 2 minutes
• 1 package frozen peas (2 cups)
• 1 bag frozen small whole onions (1 1/2 cups recommended but I used the whole bag – we like onions)
• 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley leaves

The pastry:

(Note: This was my first time making a pastry dough from scratch. I was a little nervous but it was SO easy and SO delish.)

• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 1/4 pound cold unsalted butter, diced
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup ice water
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
• Sea salt (flaked is recommended, I used regular sea salt) and cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Here is one of Ina’s signature moves: roasting chicken breasts on the bone, skin-on. This keeps the chicken moist and gives great flavor. It seems like an extra step but if you have the time, it’s totally worth it. How you do it: Place the chicken breasts on a baking sheet and rub them with olive oil. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast for about 35 to 40 minutes. Try not to overcook, but if you are a normal human and leave them in longer than planned once in a while, no big deal – the roasting technique is much more forgiving. Set those babies aside until they are cool enough to handle, then remove the meat from the bones and discard the skin. I do a lot of this by hand. Now just cut the chicken into nice-sized cubes.

In a small saucepan, heat the chicken stock and dissolve the bouillon cubes in the stock. In a large pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter and saute the onions over medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until translucent. Add the flour and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. This is what is going to make your filling nice and thick! Now add the hot chicken stock to the sauce. Simmer over low heat for another minute, stirring, until it thickens. Add 2 teaspoons salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and the heavy cream. Add the cubed chicken, carrots, peas, onions and parsley. Mix well.

My first pastry dough.

Here is the fun part! Or at least I thought it was fun, because I had never made a pastry dough and I was excited to give it a whack. First mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add the shortening and butter and mix quickly with your fingers until each piece is coated with flour. Pulse 10 times, or until the fat is roughly the size of peas. With the motor running, add the ice water; process only enough to moisten the dough and have it just come together. It happens fast and you will be amazed at how easy it is! Dump the dough out onto a floured board and knead quickly into a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic and allow it to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Now preheat that oven to 375 degrees F.

This recipe claims to make enough to fill 4 ovenproof bowls. Mine did that, plus another 13×9 casserole dish. An important lesson I have learned thus far – roll with it. Sometimes recipes lie. If you wanted, you could even freeze the rest of the filling for another day. Okay so now that the filling is in, divide the dough into equal pieces to cover whatever dishes you are using (plus a little extra so you can fold it over the edge). Brush the outside edges of each bowl with the egg wash, then place the dough on top. Trim the circle to 1/2-inch larger than the top of the bowl. Crimp the dough to fold over the side, pressing it to make it stick. Brush the dough with egg wash and make 3 slits in the top. Sprinkle with sea salt and cracked pepper. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 1 hour or more, until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbling hot. I like the top to get nice and browned, so I probably left it in about 75 minutes.

The result was the most piping hot + delicious chicken pot pie we’d ever tasted. Although I must admit, I do hear that from Daniel a lot.