Chicken Pot Pie + Fruit Crisp

Juicy post! Three recipes: pot pie, crisp, and a Tartine Bakery-favorite, now GF (for Washington Post article, linked)

Hello all!

There’s a terrific article in today’s Washington Post all about gluten-free baking that I’m interviewed in and developed a recipe for. Tartine Bakery’s Chocolate-Oat-Walnut cookies have been on my to-do list to translate into GF forever, so this was the perfect opportunity to finally work on one of my absolute favorite cookies. They are light, crisp, and slice ‘n bake, and the oats keep them from being overly sweet. The article is free.

The piece is written by Charlotte Druckman, and talks about how to translate your wheat-based recipes to GF. If you happen to live in NYC or just love reading about bakeries and baked goods and appreciate great writing, I highly recommend her

The Sweethearts

Substack.

Crisp: I took a poll earlier this week to see if you all would prefer chicken pot pie or fruit crisp, and pot pie won by a mile…but the crisp topping is one of those very simple throw-everything-in-a-bowl, Jack-of-all-trades recipes that until this week I’d never measured, so here, finally, GF fruit crisp topping. Too simple as a post on its own, but one that I use again and again, and goes equally well with berries, stone fruit, or apples. Quarter the recipe for a quick single serving mug crisp.

If you want to make a smaller version, I posted a recipe for Fruit Crisp for one or two a few weeks ago.

From top left, pot pie filling, extra chicken, and chicken jelly in pie plate; cutting out round; crimping crust; egg washed crust; baked pie

Pot Pie: I used late summer produce in this pot pie—corn and zucchini along with leeks and carrots—but you could easily make it the traditional way with just peas, carrots and onion. I used tarragon as well, which is such a summery herb to me, but you can replace it with half the amount of fresh thyme if you prefer.

I decided to go with a single crust for this pot pie, using my Cream Cheese Pie Dough because double crust pies inevitably get soggy bottoms by the second day, and if there’s one leftover I love, it’s a savory pie like this. To make sure you have enough of that delicious crisp crust though, bake it in a deep dish Pyrex and extend the crust to the outer edges of the pie plate—as opposed to baking in a straight-sided dish where you won’t get that extra amount of crust.

As you can see from the photo, I baked this pie til very browned; I was going for the kind of beautiful, dark, burnished look that you often see in pâté en croute because I wanted it crispy and caramelized to contrast with the creamy, bisque-like filling.

There are a few of downfalls to pot pies that I addressed (besides underdone crust). They often have a bland filling, are overly thickened, and can be gut-bustingly rich with too much cream. Also, they often don’t have enough chicken or vegetables. This recipe has a higher chicken/veg ratio, a lower cream to broth ratio, and has a less “gluey”, thick sauce than most; it will seem thick when you put it into the pie plate, but the chicken and vegetables will release more moisture as it bakes and will thin out a bit. Taste it as you go and season with salt and pepper. I also included some gelled chicken juices from my roast chicken (see photo), plenty of herbs, and a flavorful chicken broth.

I used roast chicken in this recipe, thinking ahead to Thanksgiving leftovers and how delicious a turkey pot pie would be with some leftover Thanksgiving vegetables. I also tend to have leftover roast chicken that I’m looking to do something with, so this method fits the bill. You could dice fresh chicken and cook it in the final stage of the recipe if you prefer to use uncooked chicken.