Chicken Pot Pie (with a guest appearance)

So this time we moved on to another issue of 'Everyday Food', the 'Warm up to Fall' issue:

It wasn't hard to choose the recipe we wanted, because we had talked for a while about making a chicken pot pie, and there was a rather nice recipe which even included extra vegetables (green beans and yellow squash) to make you think that you are eating healthily.  The recipe spread over four pages:

That should have been a clue that it was going to be a little complicated, but we are good at ignoring such clues, and started the whole process at 7.00 pm after putting Evelyn to bed.  But we had a helper!  Ronald was visiting from England, and he was in charge of reading the recipe out when called upon:

First of all, the filling.  Chop the carrots: 

Note champagne bowl to my right.  Ronald demonstrated he is the  ideal guest by bringing Veuve Cliquot with him.

 Melt a considerable amount of butter:

 Then cook onion and carrot in the butter until soft, and add flour:

Add quite a lot of flour, actually:

Naturally, it was only after adding all six tablespoons of flour that we realised the flour I had added was completely the wrong sort.  I had added self-raising ('self-rising', as it's called here) flour.  Luckily, because this dish doesn't involve baking, it didn't matter.  Then a generous amount of wine is added, along with stock and tarragon.  Stir and simmer.  Then for the extra vegetables.  Yellow squash:

and green beans (not pictured here).  After they had been added, I thought the pot needed a little more stock so they could simmer properly:

 Looking good:

After a bit more simmering (it took rather longer than the recipe suggested for the beans to cook), we added the chicken pieces and some cream:

The topping was Katherine's domain.  First of all, she rolled out some (store-bought, frozen) puff pastry with flour (the right kind - in fact, it was because she was using the right flour that I had taken the wrong flour from the cupboard).  Then it was scored and brushed with cream, and put into the oven.  It came out looking pretty good:

Assemble the two components together, and you get something looking suspiciously like the picture in the book:

Now, to accompany it we had mashed potatoes, cooked in my beautiful new copper pot and then riced with my new ricer:

For some reason, the mashed potatoes, served on the side in a ramequin, didn't make it into the final shot.

But this is the unmistakable sight of friends eating a good dinner, with good wine.  At 10.00 p.m. at night.

Next up: "Everyday Food" again, this time, "Timesaving Tricks".  Maybe we'll get to eat at 9.00 p.m. this time?