28 Chicken Pies

What is the best thing to do on a snow day? Make 28 chicken pies of course. Russ was in New England for work and I had all the makings and orders for the pies. So why waste a forced day at home and not be productive.

I always forget how much work making these pies is. Each individual ingredient has to be cooked individually to ensure that the pie is right. There is no recipe so making the right amount of green beans or chicken is an art and not a science. The longest ingredient to prep is the caramelized garlic cloves. I had made the whole soufflé dish full of garlic two days ago which made things easier since that alone takes six hours to cook.

I cooked the chicken and made the stock. Diced and boiled the red potatoes. Peeled, diced and roasted the sweet potatoes. Carefully cleaned the mushrooms, sliced and sautéed them. Cooked the green beans. Roasted the carrots. Steamed the broccoli. I thought I was almost done. I was not.

I had to make the sauce with a roux, the garlic, stock, and herbs. Am I almost done? My kitchen was beginning to look like a bomb had gone off it it. Every major pot I own was dirty and when I say major I mean like 24 quart pots. But I was not close to being done.

I had to set out 28 foil pans and carefully dole out each ingredient evenly among the lot. Then I had to spoon the sauce in. Done… NOT EVEN CLOSE. The worst part of the job was the making of the phyllo crust. I had to melt gobs of butter and then tenderly layer one sheet of phyllo on the top of the pie, butter it and then gently fold it over and repeat and repeat and repeat.

I was exhausted, and sore. I covered each pan in foil put some in my car to deliver to the home bound, since our roads still have six inches of ice on them. Some friends came by to pick theirs up and other asked me to keep theirs until they could get out.

Russ was flying in at 6:30 and I told him I would pick him up at the airport since he drove the Smart car there. He was a little late and declared that the smart cold have made it home. I told him dinner would be ready in half an hour since I needed to bake our pie fresh. He said he was happy to eat something else, but I told him after all the work that had gone into making these pies we were having that for dinner, if he wanted it or not.