Recipe: Chicken, bacon & tarragon pie

So this is what happens when International Pi day and Mothers day fall on the same weekend.

As it was mothers day, we had to cook something, and with my twitter feed largely be filled with Pi/Pie related content it seemed like this was the inevitable outcome.


I was originally planning on making a beef and mushroom pie - which would have probably ended up just more-or-less being the same as my slow cooked beef casserole recipe as a pie filling. However, this time, time did not permit so I switched to a faster cooking chicken option.  Most of this recipe is just random connections - I know chicken and leek pies are a thing, and my wife has made some nice chicken and tarragon soup before. And then bacon. Doesn't bacon go well with most things?  (as it turns out the bacon provides a nice smokey savoury taste that compliments the tarragon nicely)

Ingredients

• 500 grams diced chicken
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 leeks, chopped
• 4 rashers smoked bacon, diced
• 500 ml chicken stock
• 170 ml double cream (well, 100-200ml, the tub i bought was 170ml)
• 3-4 sprigs of tarragon
• Puff pastry (how ever much you need for the pie dish!) - bought or make your own.

Method 

You can pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees  (fan oven) if you want, but ideally you will want to cool the fillings before putting in the pie - so if you are doing the filling in advance, don't bother pre-heating now!)

1. Melt the butter in a pan and then add the leeks and cook until soft
   
   
2. Add the chicken and seal the meat
   
   
3. Add the bacon and cook for a minute or two - it needn't be long
   
   
4. Add the chicken stock and bring to a simmer
   
   
5. Add the double cream, stir through
   
   
6. Finely chop the tarragon and add to the filling, stir through
   
   
7. Reduce the sauce on a medium heat until it's reduced by about half - it should be fairly thick, so it's not too runny in the pie
   
   
8. Line pie dish with pastry
   
   
9. Leave the fillings to cool, then spoon into pie dish and cover the pie with more pastry
   
   
10. Cook in the oven for around 30minutes at about 180 degrees (the filling is cooked, si we are just cooking the pastry, so just keep an eye on it and make sure the pastry is browning ok, and not burning etc

I served with cheesey mash.