Tag Archives: cooking

Chicken and Leek Pie

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A square pie

I HAVE to re-post this recipe after making it for the first time in the life of this blog – it turned out super well too! Well, not really a recipe, just a brief guide to the ingredients and method with you left to add flair depending on what you have on hand and what you score at the supermarket. I pretty much had to start from scratch when buying the ingredients this time around since I’d reasonably recently done fridge and pantry culls and cleanouts and we’ve been mostly making EVeryplate meals lately.

 

Ingredients used:

  • 500g chicken thigh, diced
  • A couple of rashers of bacon, diced
  • Half a thing each of white and swiss brown mushrooms chopped roughly
  • A leek, sliced thinly
  • Butter for frying up stuff
  • Some fresh thyme. picked and then chopped finely
  • Garlic (not pictured)
  • Half a jar of light cream
  • Tsp vegetable stock, cup boiling water
  • 3 sheets frozen puff pastry 
  • An egg and some milk for the egg wash on top of the pie

Method:

  1. Chop everything up and put into bowls on your bench ready to fry up
  2. Melt some butter in the frypan. Fry up leek and mushroom with some of the thyme. Transfer to bowl.
  3. Fry up the bacon.
  4. Melt more butter. Fry up garlic and the chicken with the rest of the thyme, in batches if you prefer.
  5. Return it all to the pan.
  6. Add stock powder and boiling water. Or stock if you’re fancy like that.
  7. Simmer down til there’s very little liquid. Add in cream and cook through. Add pepper to taste.
  8. Preheat oven to 180 degrees, get pastry out of freezer and place on bench to thaw.
  9. Use one piece of pastry as pie base, put in filling, then top with pastry and use third piece for decorations. Brush with egg and milk wash.
  10. Cook for at least 45min, until pastry is browned to your liking.

Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes, Then serve up. I do like to serve it with fresh green beans if they’re in season, but it’s great by itself too!

Sometimes we add a little seed mustard to it to change up the flavour a little. Or use chicken breast, or different mushrooms. Or some sour cream. But this is the base recipe that is universally loved!

As an aside, my “lemon” kitchen is coming along, with actual lemons, lemon tea towels and mitts and an apron and a mat even. I got these amazing vintage curtains (well my sister got them for me and even hemmed them to size) for $4 at The Makers Place in Teralba. I love how it’s all coming together! 

 

EveryPlate Bulk Cook meals

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I decided to give the “bulk cook” weekly meal options a try from EveryPlate by cooking them up for my sister and her kids. For them, there’s a few I’ve taken or minimised the dairy from for them – using almond milk, or just not using butter and cheese. There’s a different recipe each week (I’m sure there’s repeats), though the ones you’ll see are similar in some ways. Using tinned legumes, mince, one had chicken tenderloins which were quick to cut up. I’ve added veges  – zucchini in the first photo – when I’ve gotten something I can throw in at our Friday foodbank run.

Like all other EveryPlate meals, you get the recipe card, the fresh ingredients, herbs and spices, stock, and any grains like rice or cous cous. The price for the bulk cook meal is $25 as an optional add-on when you go through and select your recipes for the week. Some I didn’t get – like a tomato spaghetti that just didn’t inspire me as freezable, but yeah, the casseroles, stews, and potato pies have gone down well.

You then supply things like olive oil, salt and pepper, butter/milk (that I leave out for my sister so some of these are easily made vegetarian and vegan). They get you to use the water from the chickpeas and beans so there’s no rinsing and you can use that salty water as stock.

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There’s a mix of stovetop cooking – which my huge Misen pot is great for both frying and simmering the large amounts, oh and boiling potatoes. There’s roasting of vegetables too. And things like the cous cous to make up to serve I just send along dry and Jen can take care of that as she needs it, along with any toppings like almonds, or the cheese for melting over for the big kids.

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I tinker a little – I find sometimes if you add all the stock powder things start to get a little too salty, so I’ll use less rather than more and add in later if I think it could do with it.

This pork mince/cottage pie I made at home, but took over to Jen’s that evening and we finished it off in the oven there, and I got to eat with them. I left a mini-pie for my partner in the noodle bowl to heat for himself :p

The recipes also give you other time-saving options, like not peeling the carrots of potatoes, I I prefer to.

As far as value for money, the way that prices have been going up at the shops for fresh veges and even tinned ones with transport costs, $25 for the supplied ingredients, recipe card, and inspiration and motivation to then get it cooked up works out well for me. Giving me a tangible way to help out and getting to cook too.

I also gave the $20 fruit add-on box a go. I couldn’t really justify it. After pricing the items I got in this one at $13 on woolies online. But you might like the convenience, there is a larger $25 option which might be better value too

I’m still getting the weekly boxes, and it’s still working well for me. I like that I can still put together a nice healthy meal even if I’ve had a big day and my brain is a little used up! The box I get has gone up in price, but given the semi hyper inflation at the moment it’s still great value for us. You can see my overview of them in this previous post.

I also regularly get free trial boxes to share – I currently have three, you just pay $10 shipping. If you want to try EveryPlate, let me know below or use my referral link for $60 off.

What have you been doing to keep fresh veges on that table with inflation and supply issues?