Chicken pie

Regular readers will know that we make chicken soup with the remains of more or less every roast chicken that we have. And roast chicken, these days, is mostly what we eat in the way of roast.

Whereas, as a child, there was an in-between stage. So the batting order was hot chicken, cold chicken, pied chicken and souped chicken. Where pied chicken (or turkey) was a white version of a cottage pie. A sort of chicken stew under and mashed potato over, the whole baked to bring it heat and to brown it a bit.

Something we also have done in the past, but not recently - and yesterday we thought to renew the custom, there still being a fair bit of chicken left after the cold chicken stage. Plus about a pint of a good looking stock which may well have included some e-numbers as well as chicken.

Collect up any used boiled vegetables which might be lying about and chop as appropriate. In this case, potato, carrot, rice and cabbage.

Cook and mash a suitable quantity of fresh potatoes. Mashed with butter rather than with milk.

Cook some celery, onion and chopped back bacon (medium grade, not anything fancy like dry cured) in the stock. Strain.

Roux the strained stock, topped up with a little potato water, with some butter. Bring to heat, to a thin custard texture. Should be a very pale yellow in colour.

Coarsely chop some mushrooms.

Coarsely chop the remaining chicken.

Put all the solid ingredients, apart from the mashed potato, into a suitable pie dish. Pour the sauce over them. Spread the mashed potato on top; a top which should be more or less solid, not a sea of sauce. Make suitable patterns with the tines of a fork, involving small child with this bit if available. Make a vent in the middle.

Cook for an hour or so at 175C. Serve with boiled cabbage. The two of us did about three quarters of it.