The fourteenth recipe I made from the Savory Tarts & Pies section (the 58th recipe overall in this book) of The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri, was the one for Chicken Pie with Biscuit Topping, on pages 152-153. (We are not publishing recipes from the book, so if you like what you see, buy the book and bake along with or without us). This was the last recipe I made from this section, opting to skip the Shrimp & Toasted Pumpkinseed Tart as the photo in the book showed a green filling with shrimp and the guys were having none of it...actually I wasn't all that shot up about it either and after the fish pie fiasco, I decided to call it a day after I completed the chicken pie recipe so that I can move onto the sweet tarts and pie section coming up next.
The ingredient list for the filling: chicken, onion, carrots, peas, cream, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper, and bay leaf.
The biscuit topping ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt, butter, and buttermilk.
The photo of this in the book looks so good that I knew we were going to enjoy it, all the ingredients being popular ones at our house. The biscuit topping was absolutely delicious, Mark commented on it several times.
The filling is made and put into the proper size pan, I used and 8x8 baking dish as that was half of the recipe, Matt being on spring break, I figured half would be more than plenty and Mark could take the leftovers in his lunch tomorrow.
The biscuit dough comes together quickly in the food processor, patted into a square and cut into 9 equal pieces, patted into circles and put on top of the filling ingredients.
I followed everything in the recipe with three exceptions: I used half a recipe in and 8x8 baking dish, my biscuits were not done in the time allowed so I had to bake it about 10 extra minutes (ovens are all different on timing), and since the others in the group who made this found the sauce too watery, I reduced the liquid by a third again as much before adding in the cream. That seemed to work as the result was a little sauce in the bottom, but not too much.
Oh, this was great, and we will definitely be making this again. If you would like to bake along or be a part of the Modern Baker group, you will find all that, plus a tab to link to the blogs posting the Breads, with the blogroll here.
