Epic Chicken Pot Pie

What's better on a cold winter's day than a chicken pot pie with delicious filling and crisp, yummy crusts on the top and bottom? A chicken pot pie with delicious filling and crisp, yummy crusts on the top and bottom, with one in the MIDDLE.

Pie Filling:
1 lb carrots
1 celery heart
2 onions
Worchestershire sauce
Granulated garlic
1 1/2 lbs green beans
10-14 chicken thighs and legs
4-5 medium/large potatoes
Bay leaves
Red pepper flakes
Whole allspice
Salt
Pepper

Cordless Screwdrivers:
4 oz vodka
1 orange
Sugar

Pie Crust x 3:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup shortening
Ice water

1. Slice up the onions and marinate them overnight in Worchestershire, salt, and granulated garlic. Honestly, a sandwich Ziploc bag works fine, but if that offends your sensibilities--feel free to use a bowl or something.

2. Cook chicken in water. This will take 4 hours or so. Put the chicken pieces in a large pot along with 3 bay leaves, 1 pinch of red pepper, 5 whole allspice, 2T of salt, and 1 t of cracked black pepper. Bring pot to a simmer and maintain. Add water as needed to keep the liquid level high in the pot. When the chicken is nearly done (starting to fall off the bone and very tender) drink 4 cordless screwdrivers with your cooking partner (see note below) and add the orange peels into the broth. When done, you should have about 12 cups of broth.

*Note: Cordless Screwdrivers. Slice an orange into wedges by first cutting in half from stem to navel. With a large orange, you can get 4 nice wedges out of each half. Cut any white fibers off the inner point of the wedges for ease of eating later. Dredge the orange wedges in sugar. Pour a shot of vodka. Do the shot and eat the sugar-coated orange wedge as a chaser--thanks to Every Day Drinkers.com for the inspiration!

3. At some point while the chicken is cooking (or even the day before), prepare the vegetables. You'll need to peel and cut the carrots into coins; clean and chop the celery (or mince if you'd rather); wash and dice the potatoes; trim the ends off the green beans and slice em in half.

4. Saute the onion in a large pot with fat skimmed off the chicken broth.

5. Put the tubers and celery to the pot and add broth until the veggies are covered. Boil until the tubers are done--aka you can poke em with a fork and it goes in nicely without too much resistance. Add the green beans and cook until they're toothy.

6. Put a strainer over another large pot and drain the chicken into it. Put the chicken back into the original pot and put the lid on it. If it's cold and wintery outside (as it should be if you're making the recipe PROPERLY), put the pot with the chicken outside to cool off. If not--well I guess you'll just have to wait then!

7. Drain the veggies into the pot with the broth and put them aside.

8. Make the three crusts. Combine the flour and shortening in a large bowl. Rub the mixture between your hands until it is fully incorporated. Add ice water by the spoonful, mixing in between, until the dough comes together into a ball. It shouldn't be too moist, but it also shouldn't be crumbling apart. Roll out the dough ball on a floured surface until it is big and round enough to fit into the bottom of a cast iron pot (mine is about 12" in diameter, with 4" high walls). Make another batch of dough and put the rolled out circle into the cast iron pot's lid. Dock these two crusts and bake them in a 450-degree oven until they're browned--about 12 minutes. Make the third crust and roll it out into a circle about the diameter of your pot. Set it aside and put plastic wrap over it to keep it moist.

9. Make the gravy. Take the chicken and veg broth that you've made and bring it to a simmer. Add a mixture of corn starch and water until the broth has thickened into a nice gravy. My advice is to start with just a bit of the corn starch mixture at a time--you don't want to end up with Jello! Set aside.

10. Hopefully the chicken will have cooled off a good amount by now. Pick the meat off the bones. Dispose of the bay leaves and whole allspice. Combine the chicken with the veg.

11. Assemble the pie. Put a layer of the chicken and veg mixture in the bottom of the pot. Spoon some gravy over the layer. Add the baked crust you prepared in the lid of the cast iron pot. Add more chicken filling and gravy on top of the middle crust. When the pot is filled up, place the unbaked crust over the top of the pot. Cut slits in a radiating pattern (looks like a sand dollar, kinda). Bake the pie until browned and warmed through--about 20 minutes in a 450-degree oven.

Serve!

Sriracha-Blue Cheese Chicken Sandwiches

Came up with the idea for these little beauties when I heard about the upcoming Sriracha Cookbook. Usually, I shy away from this sauce...though Joe loves it, it is way too spicy for me. However, after reading about the layers of flavor encapsulated within...garlic, ketchupy-sweetness...I thought maybe I should give it another shot. The best way seemed to be blending a small amount of it with a creamy base of some sort. After some thought, I came up with the following. Mixing with blue cheese creates a yummy buffalo-wing-esque flavor, and the marinade and rub add further layers of complexity. Yum! Give it a try. Don't be afraid to take the heat!

Sriracha-Blue Cheese Chicken Sandwiches
Makes 4 sandwiches

2 large chicken breasts
4 hamburger buns

Marinade:
Granulated garlic
Red pepper flakes
Salt
Water to cover

Rub:
Packet of ranch dressing mix

Dressing:
1/4c blue cheese dressing
2t sriracha


1. Mix the sauce. Combine the blue cheese dressing and sriracha in a small bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes or longer to allow the flavors to meld.

2. Marinate the chicken. Grab a large bowl. Toss in some garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes. Pour in some water and mix up. Throw (ok, gently place) the chicken breasts in there. Fill with water until the breasts are covered over. Refrigerate an hour or overnight.

3. Rub the chicken. Remove the breasts from the marinade. Pat them dry with a paper towel. Cut each breast in half. Rub all sides with ranch dressing mix.

4. Grill. Grill the chicken on medium heat until done...about 25-35 minutes.

5. Toast buns. Don't burn them!

6. Serve. Place tasty seasoned chicken breast pieces on buns; top with blue cheese/sriracha sauce. Good with a big red leaf lettuce salad...the water helps take the heat off!

Enjoy. And don't get any sriracha in your eye, cuz I bet that would hurt a lot. It's made with chiles, you know.

Grilled Chicken Gyros

I recently discovered that I like Greek food. It's understandable why this was so recent...I loathe the taste of olives (including olive oil), raw tomatoes, don't really enjoy mint with savory dishes, was more fond of the smell than the taste of basil, am seriously close to detesting cucumbers, and until the past couple of years thought that feta cheese was "weird." Not to mention that the greasy excuses for gyros that the school cafeteria served were...well...strange flat pieces of meat that smelled odd and tasted bizarre. However...Spyro Gyros converted me. The absolute best gyro I have ever eaten...chunks of tasty lamb and beef, tender and juicy in the middle, lightly crunchy and caramelized outside, onions, feta, a delicious tzatziki sauce, all rolled up in a seriously soft-yet-crunchy pita. Mmm. Not to mention an absolutely awesome greek salad...spring mix with beets, feta, onion, greek dressing...

Anyway. I like greek food now, mostly. I might pick off olives and tomatoes, and drench cucumbers in dressing...but I've expanded my horizons. It's true. So when I saw a recipe in Weis Market's Healthy Bites for chicken gyros with tzatziki sauce...I thought "What the hell! I've got most of those ingredients!" and this version was born.


Grilled Chicken Gyros
Serves 4
About 220 calories each

2 chicken breasts
Dash of vegetable oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1T italian seasoning
4 pitas, or two enormous pieces of naan bread, sliced in half
Feta cheese
Onion
Lettuce and tomato for topping

Sauce:
1 regular (small) container of Greek plain yogurt
1/2 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, minced
2t lemon juice
2t granulated garlic
S+P to taste

1. Grill chicken. This will take about 30 minutes if you use the whiffy sniffy frozen kind.
2. Make sauce. I prefer one of the shaker things from Tupperware. To seed the cucumber, first peel it and then use the peeler to scrape out the center.

Seeding a cucumber is oddly satisfying.

3. Cook the stuff that goes with the chicken. Combine the oil, minced garlic, diced onion, and italian seasoning in a small saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring incessantly.
4. Chop up the chicken. Add it to the saucepan and stir until combined.
5. Warm the naan. Throw them on the freshly turned-off grill for a few minutes.
6. Serve. If you're using naan, cut it in half. Throw all the stuff on there and EAT IT!