Mileage from a Chicken Pot Pie

 

What do these two pictures have in common?

Mileage.

(I know. I’m the Queen of Strange and Unusual Connections. I can’t help it. It’s the reading teacher in me.)

Allow me to explain…

(Well, I’ll explain the connection between the two pictures. You’ll have to figure out the reading teacher part yourself.)

My sister sent me this photo she took of the odometer in her car when it turned 400,000 miles just the other day. No extra zeroes in that number. That’s correct. Four-fifths of the way to a half-million miles.

She drives a 1995 Toyota Camry. Well, now her husband mostly drives it. They traded in his much newer car for another much newer Camry. (The one she now mostly drives.) And that officially makes them a Cam-Fam. (Get it? That’s Camry and family put together. I made it up. Like you didn’t know.)

And me? I’m green with envy. I mean, how many people out there can say they have 400,000 miles on their car, 385,000 of which they put on it all by themselves? (Not including Ferris Bueller. And he didn’t even go anywhere.) But, that’s what you get when you take excellent care of your car, people. My sister is the only person I know who actually waxes her car by hand and follows the maintenance schedule in the owner’s manual to a T. Contrary to the popular belief of most men, those manuals really are worth reading.

What does all this have to do with chicken pot pie? Well, it doesn’t come with an owner’s manual, unless you count the recipe. But chicken pot pie can definitely get you some mileage. I mean, how many dishes out there can you serve without a crust and still call it a pie? (Okay, not counting Boston Cream Pie.) That’s the point. You can serve chicken pot pie pretty much any way you want and still call it pie.

I prepared this chicken pot pie over the weekend, and it was the perfect answer to a bitterly cold January day. My friend, Jill, gave me the recipe several months ago, and I’ve made it three times already. I love that there is no canned soup in it, and even so, it’s still just as simple. Jill makes hers with top and bottom pastry crusts, but I changed it a little and used a biscuit topping instead. I love the buttery goodness of the biscuits with the creamy taste and texture of the chicken filling. Definitely comfort food to warm you, body and soul.

Dare I say it? Warm your engine and get some mileage with this chicken pot pie, no matter how you make it.

Yours in pie,

Mindy

 Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping

Filling recipe from Jill Kinnison

Biscuit recipe from Taste of Home 

For the filling:
1/3 c. butter
1/3 c. onion, chopped
1/3 c. all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
1 ½ c. chicken broth
2/3 c. milk
2 to 2 ½ c. shredded, cooked chicken
2 c. or more frozen mixed vegetables (I used peas and carrots)

In skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and cook for 2 minutes or until tender. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper until well blended. Gradually stir in chicken broth and milk, stirring constantly until mixture is bubbly and thick. Add chicken and vegetables. Remove from heat and pour into greased 9” square (or larger) baking dish.

For the biscuits:
2 c. all-purpose flour
4 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cream of tartar
½ c. cold butter, cubed
2/3 c. milk

In large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cream of tartar. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs; stir in milk just until moistened. Turn onto a lightly-floured surface; knead 8 to 10 times. Pat or roll out to ½-inch thickness. Cut with 2 ½-inch biscuit cutter.

Place biscuits over chicken mixture in baking dish. Bake, uncovered, at 400° for about 20 minutes or until biscuits are golden brown.  


I shared this recipe on:

Full-Plate Thursday at Miz Helen's Country Cottage
Church Supper at Everyday Mom's Meals

 Check out all the great recipes at these Linky Parties!

A Tomato Problem, and Tomato Basil Pie

In my most recent (and first ever) Pie on Sunday post, I began with saying that I love pie.

I love something else almost as much.

Basil.

I love basil.

Fresh, sweet basil.

And because of basil, among other things, I’m already breaking with tradition a little this week. Usually when I think of pie, especially pie on Sunday, I first imagine a sweet fruit filling between two flaky layers.

But this week, I had a few reasons to take a brief detour. My family and I traveled to Minnesota for a wedding and a family reunion on my husband’s side. It was requested that the cousins (that includes us) bring an appetizer to share before the main meal at the reunion.

What to bring, what to bring…

While contemplating this very dilemma, I had glanced over at the two boxes of tomatoes resting on my kitchen counter. A beautiful array of blemish-free tomatoes, perfectly round and red, a small variety called “4^th of July”, seemed to sit up a little more straight with their crunchy dry stems perking up as I stared deep in thought. I’d already canned a batch of salsa as well as a few pints of larger tomatoes to have on hand over the winter. What could I use these little beauties for?

The dilemma wasn’t so much what to make, but more so what could I do to use them up. You see, this is the dilemma every year late in the summer, when my dad delivers (several times) a plethora of pretty tomatoes.  He does this because he has the same tomato problem every year.

He plants way too many tomato plants. This year, the most ever: 54.

Yes. You read that correctly.

54.

(Fifty-four.)

Not 54 tomatoes (which would probably be a just-right yield in itself), but 54 tomato plants.

If a person’s sanity could be measured by tomatoes alone, I think my dad could be certifiable.

And it isn’t just the tomatoes. He goes crazy with just about his entire garden, which by the way, is large enough to feed the entire Duggar family. All 21 of them (by my last count). Really.

His usual potato planting practices alone result in anywhere from over 200 to more than 350 hills of potatoes in the ground, depending on the year. And imagine the number of potatoes each hill yields. While he doesn’t go quite so crazy with other vegetables, he does plant many different types, including cabbage, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, kohlrabi, rutabaga, carrots, onions, beans, cucumbers, summer and winter squashes, all kinds of peppers, zucchini, kale, and more. And there are usually several varieties of each. Which is why I think my dad ends up with so many tomato plants: He can’t bear to plant just one of each variety. It’s his insurance policy that every variety will survive to harvest, no matter the circumstances.

And every year, it ultimately becomes my tomato problem.

Which brings us back to pie. And basil.

Since I would be making a pie for Sunday anyway, and I needed an appetizer for the reunion, and I had all those tomatoes, I knew just what to do.

I would make Tomato Basil Pie, and kill three birds with one stone. (I wonder if those birds they refer to are pie birds. You know, the ceramic kind that are placed in the middle of the pie to vent and allow steam to escape? Seems a little more than a coincidence, don’t you think?)

An irresistible combination of cheeses layered with diced fresh tomatoes and fragrant ribbons of slivered fresh basil leaves atop a prebaked crust and baked again until it all becomes a melted bliss, this pie can’t be beat. It’s the perfect answer to a hot cheesy dip, yet instead of any dipping, the crust plays the part of built-in crackers, and you can eat it with a fork.

Since my pie crust recipe makes enough dough for a two-crust pie, and a tomato basil pie needs just one crust, I decided to go ahead and make two pies. And I’m glad I did, because I went home from the reunion with two empty pie plates.

So if you’re looking for a solution to the problem of too many tomatoes, make Tomato Basil Pie -- on Sunday, or any day of the week.

Yours in pie,

Mindy

This recipe for Tomato Basil Pie comes from The Ivy Bake Shoppe Cookbook, by Martha Wolf. The Ivy BakeShoppe and Café is located in historic downtown Fort Madison, which is along the Mississippi River in southeast Iowa. I’ve never been to The Ivy, but it’s on my list of places to visit, and I can’t wait for the day, because I’ve heard that their breakfast pastries, coffee bar, and lunch items are simply irresistible. No customer leaves The Ivy disappointed. And you won’t be disappointed with this Tomato Basil Pie.

Tomato Basil Pie

1 baked 9-inch pie crust

 

1 ½ c. shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

*3 medium-size tomatoes, diced and drained

1 c. fresh basil leaves, loosely measured, then slivered

1 clove garlic, minced

¾ c. mayonnaise

¼ tsp. freshly ground pepper

¼ c. shredded Parmesan cheese

Put ¾ c. of the mozzarella cheese on the bottom of the pie crust. Cover cheese with tomatoes and then layer on basil. In a bowl, combine garlic, mayonnaise, pepper, Parmesan cheese, and remaining ¾ c. mozzarella cheese, and mix well. Spread carefully on top of basil layer. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes, or until cheese is golden and bubbly. Makes 8 servings.

*For this pie, I used about 9 of the small “4^th of July” tomatoes, which are the size of a large cherry tomato. They were rather juicy, so I made sure to drain them very well. You could use a Roma-type tomato, they have less juice, but still drain them. You don’t want any excess liquid to ruin your cheesy basil bliss.