Clean plate club

It’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios night in your house and you want to put together a great meal for the occasion. You’re in luck because here at the Main Street Gazette we have two dishes to serve up from 50’s Prime Time Cafe! A couple of years back we gave you the recipe and showed you how to prepare Mom’s Meatloaf, today we’re heading back to where mom learned to cook, and that’s Grandma and Grandma’s Chicken Pot Pie!

Let’s start with the recipe:

GRANDMA’S CHICKEN POT PIE

Ingredients:

3 Cups Milk (or Half and Half)

2 Cups Chicken Tenderloins (Uncooked)
1 Cup Broccoli (Florets)
1 Cup Parmesan cheese (Grated)
½ Cup Carrots (Cubed)

½ Cup Celery (Cubed)
¼ Cup Leeks (Diced)
3 Tbsps. Butter
3 Tbsps. Flour
2 Bouillon Cubes (Chicken)

2 Sheets Pastry Dough
1 Egg (Beaten)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

In boiling salted water, simmer chicken tenderloins, broccoli, carrots, celery, and leeks until chicken is fully cooked and vegetables are tender, but still firm (approximately 15 minutes).

Drain well and set aside.

In a medium sized skillet, melt butter and add flour.

Cook for 5 minutes and add milk or half-and-half.

Bring to a boil and simmer until thickened (approximately 10 minutes).

Dissolve chicken bouillon cubes in 1/4 cup warm water and add to sauce.

Blend in grated Parmesan cheese and remove from heat.

Add cooked chicken and vegetables and mix well.

Line a deep dish pie plate with one sheet of pie dough.

Pour mixture into a deep-dish pie plate and cover with second sheet of pie dough.

Seal edges, place a few cuts into the top layer of dough, and brush top with beaten egg.

Bake 45 to 50 minutes until crust is golden brown and the filling is hot.

Brushing a little milk on the top of the pie dough before baking will add color to the crust.

Here are a few prep tips that the recipe doesn’t give you. We chose to cook our pieces of chicken as whole tenderloin and then shred them before we added them to the sauce, the other option would be to cube the chicken first before adding it to the boiling water. While you can buy grated Parmesan, I grated my own, but that is a personal choice. Additionally, in the future I would likely use chicken stock instead of bouillon cubes (The missus wants me to let you know that there are some national brands of bouillon cubes that use MSG [no, not the Main Street Gazette]).

Viola! You have a pot pie that your mother and her mother before her would be proud of, and it is the perfect accompaniment to, say, the Wizard of Oz. The pot pie is creamy and is all the elements are fork tender, but not mushy. The cheese adds a great bit of sharpness to the dish, while the crust is golden and flakey. Grandma’s Chicken Pot Pie is even better at work or as leftovers, as all of the components have thickened up and had more time to mingle their flavors together! I’d probably add in a few other vegetables next time, such as potatoes and onions, but this is a great meal that hits me right in my southern food comfort zone!

I hope you take the time to plan an evening around Disney’s Hollywood Studios (please, send us pictures if you do!), and that your first pot pie comes out as well as mine did!

If you are so inclined, you can see the step by step preparations below.