Diane Phillips lures you into her cookbook with a picture of the perfect pot pie, topped with a lid of golden-brown, flaky crust. Inside this cookbook, though, you'll find that what Phillips offers is not your grandmother's labor-intensive pot pie. Indeed, most of the 75 recipes are suited to the limited time and dietary desires of today's cooks. Her easy-to-assemble fillings emphasize chicken breast, lean meat, and other healthful ingredients, while the toppings can be put together in a snap.
Broccoli is a vegetable people either love or hate, as evidenced by its banishment from the White House some years ago. I'm convinced that if the President had been served this pie, he wouldn't have been able to resist the bottom rice crust filled with steamed broccoli and crowned with a light-as-a-feather hollandaise topping.
Servings: 6 to 8
Rice and Broccoli Filling
2 cups cooked rice
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 shakes Tabasco sauce
4 cups steamed broccoli florets, tossed with salt and pepper to taste
1 recipe Hollandaise Crust (recipe follows)
In a large bowl, stir together the rice, egg, melted butter, salt, and Tabasco. Spray a 10-inch ovenproof dish with non stick cooking spray. Press the rice mixture into the bottom of the pan. Arrange the broccoli over the rice.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Make the crust. Spread the sauce/crust over the broccoli. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes, until the crust is golden and set. Let the pie stand for 5 minutes before cutting it into wedges and serving.
Hollandaise Crust
This is a take-off on sauce mousseline, in which stiffly whipped cream was folded into a hollandaise. Make this just before baking, so that the crust will puff up nicely.
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus additional to taste
Place the egg yolks, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, the parsley, chives, mustard, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and Tabasco into the work bowl of a food processor or blender. Blend for 1 minute. With the motor running, gradually add the hot butter through the feed tube until the sauce thickens, about 30 seconds. Taste For seasoning, and add more salt or lemon juice as needed. Remove from the work bowl, and turn into a mixing bowl. Fold in the whipping cream.
