Winging it in the kitchen

 

No, Jacob didn't make pot pie at three

One of the culinary tenets the late Helen Corbitt repeated in classes, lectures, and columns was the cooking must be fun—well, at least enjoyable. I suspect too many home cooks are a bit awed by cooking, a bit afraid to step out of the box. Well, I’m here to tell you that sometimes you have to leap out of that cooking box, fly past the recipe. That’s just what happened the other night when I was making chicken pot pie for four. The ingredients I had on hand didn’t match the recipe closely at all, particularly in quantity, so I winged it.

The recipe called for two cups chicken. As I’ve confessed often, we used a rotisserie chicken for casseroles. Most days it seems to me those birds are shrinking, and when I need three cups of diced meat, I get barely two. So this night, I needed one cup and must have gotten three. I started there. The recipe called for one cup, mixed, of peas and corn. Jordan had gotten a bag of mixed vegetables—so I used the whole bag which was at least two cups. The sauce called for cream of chicken soup (1/2 can but by now I knew I had too much chicken and vegetables, so I used the entire can) and 4 oz. cream cheese. If I had 3 oz. left in the cheese drawer, I was lucky. I ended up with way too much filler for the sauce I had.

Oh, well. A little white wine always helps a casserole. I gave it a couple good splashes. I needed something like the soup, but another can of soup didn’t sound right. Mayonnaise doesn’t come to mind for casseroles, but it’s a good binding agent. So several glops of mayo went in. I stirred, added more mayo, and then remembered the recipe called for cheddar, so I grated that in. When I stirred, everything was coated by a nice amount of sauce. Salt and pepper and it went into the casserole dish to be topped with puff pastry. I have long done pot pies with crescent rolls, but I think the puff pastry makes a lighter crust. It does not hold up well as leftovers, however. Gets too soggy.

Everyone seemed to like it for supper. Christian, who doesn’t like peas, lima beans, or cooked carrots, even said it was good and apparently didn’t notice those vegetables buried in the sauce.

Here’s the recipe I was winging off, and it’s not very precise to begin with because it came from my own cookbook, Cooking My Way through Life with Kids and Books. The last time I remember fixing this, Jordan, Jacob, and I ate the whole thing. Jacob liked the sauce so much he used strawberries to scrape up the last little bit. But that was some time ago. The other night I had almost half left after Jordan, Christian, and I had supper.

Filling:

1 cup cooked chicken, diced, perhaps a bit more

½ cup frozen petite peas

½ cup corn kernels

½ cup cream of chicken soup

4 oz. cream cheese

½ cup cheddar cheese, grated

Mix all together and put in a greased 8x8 oven-proof dish.

Top with crescent rolls or puff pastry. If using crescent dough, pinch the perforations together to get a solid sheet. Either way, cut the dough to fix, so that it sort of floats on the topping. Brush with melted butter or egg wash for a browner top.

Bake at 375^o for 20 minutes.

And here’s my culinary tip for the day: next time you make a tuna salad sandwich, or chicken salad, top the salad with potato chips before adding the second piece of bread. Adds crunch and makes it so good!