Cheat the pastry with shop-bought shortcrust if you don’t have time to make it yourself, while wild mushrooms up the ante in this chicken and mushroom pie.
Ingredients
- For the pastry
- 175g/6oz
plain flour - ½ tsp
salt - 45g/1½oz
butter, diced - 50g/1¾oz
lard, diced
- 175g/6oz
- For the pie
- 1.5kg/3lb 5oz whole
chicken - 2
onions, finely chopped - 1
bay leaf salt and black pepper - 1 tbsp
olive oil - 75g/2½oz unsalted
butter - 2 tbsp
plain flour - 350g/12oz
wild mushrooms such as chanterelle, ceps, tompette, girolles - 150ml/5fl oz
white wine - 150ml/5fl oz
double cream - 4 sprigs fresh
tarragon, leaves only - 1 free-range
egg, lightly beaten
- 1.5kg/3lb 5oz whole
- For the carrots and peas
- 75g/2½oz
butter - 1 tsp
caster sugar - 1 bunch baby
carrots, washed and trimmed - 200g/7oz frozen
peas
- 75g/2½oz
Preparation method
For the shortcrust pastry, put the flour and salt in a large bowl and add the cubes of butter and lard.
Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour until you have a mixture that resembles coarse breadcrumbs with no large lumps of butter remaining. Try to work quickly so that it does not become greasy.
For the carrots and peas, heat a frying pan until hot. Add the butter, sugar and five tablespoons of water and cook until the volume of liquid has reduced slightly. Add the carrots and cook for a couple of minutes, then add the peas and continue to cook until they are tender and the liquid has reduced to a glaze.
To serve, remove the pie from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving with the carrots and peas.