Hi all friends here on TKL. I haven't logged on much lately due to the renovation. In fact, I am sitting among a bunch of furniture and "rubbish" at the moment... Saw 34 e-mail waiting for me to reply... Headaches... Anyway, here is one great sounding recipe coming to my mailbox. Hope someone will like it... Gotta run!

ps: it's a tried recipe (but not by me). All the comments are from the original sender.
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Granny's Chicken Pie

First, you have to understand that Granny was born in 1890 - back
when you had to wring your own chicken's neck, or get it with feathers
still on, from someone who had *already* wrung its neck. It was
sort of like buying clothes, back then: you sewed them at home, or
you paid a talented lady to sew them for you; there warn't no
"ready-to-wear". (I learned how to sew, in the early 1960's, on
Granny's old patterns of Gibson Blouses, with lace insertion - but
that's for another ng :-).

Anyhow, we grew up eating this pie without ever thinking about how
it was made; until about 1984, when my Granny lay dying. She'd been
out of her mind for a few months, when my brother realised that we
had Never Gotten The Recipe For The Chicken Pie (oh, my!).

So, one day when Brother was sitting with Mama, he asked her, "Granny,
how do you cook the chicken pie???"

And Granny, from out of her daze, said:

"Well, first you get a chicken; and you pluck all the feathers off."

(Mama remembered very little of recent history, during her final
days; but she was real sharp, about *ancient* history. I'm told that
that's how it goes.)

Anyhow, the recipe was never written down - Granny did things by
eye-and-ear; but here's how I've reconstructed it; and it's always
a hit - very big with meat-and-potatoes guys. You just have to
remember that it's a very *free-form* recipe - you can add a little
of this or that, do some of it ahead or not; you have to experiment
with it; and if you do, it will get better every time. The changes
I have made, are these: Granny almost always made it as a "country"
pie - she laid down whole pieces of stewed chicken, on the bone, in
the pan, and then poured the sauce on, and put on the crust. I remove
the chicken from the bone, dice it, and add a mess of peas. Granny's
gravy was also a lot "runnier" than mine usually turns out. Either
way is nice. And I always chop up *very finely* a very small onion, and
throw it into the final mix.
I know that the people here can adapt this to their
own tastes.

So:

To Make The Crust, Mix together:

2 cups of white all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
4 tsps. baking powder (Rumford)Then Cut In:

1/2 cup (real) Butter.

(I've tried this every-which way: with a pastry-blender, in the
food-processor, and the old, primitive way: with two knives. Do
it with Two Knives, until it's like a coarse mealy-thing, with the
lumps no bigger than little peas. Watch TV while you do it, it's
a tedious process.)

When you've got your coarse mealy-thing, quickly mix in:

2/3 cup whole milk

and form the whole mess into a ball. Don't knead it a lot; just
get it to hold together. Then refrigerate it (I usually stuff it
into a tupperware-type container.)

COOK the Chicken:

Stew about 3 pounds of mixed chicken - parts until tender. (you can
brown them in a frying pan first, if you like; usually I don't.)
I like to pick a nice mix of white and brown meat - I personally
prefer brown chicken meat, it has more flavor and isn't so dry.

When the chicken is tender, and somewhat cool, remove it from the
bones and chop it up into bite-sized cubes, and set it aside.

Make the Sauce:

Reduce the stock that you cooked the chicken in, to about two
cups. (If you're lazy, and especially if you're doing this ahead
of time, just stick it in the freezer and let the fat float to the top
after which you can skim the fat off, and use as much of it as your
taste and physician will allow.)

Make a sort-of roux:

Melt in a saucepan: 6 Tablespoons of butter
and stir in 6 Tablespoons of flour.

Cook this on medium-to-low for about two minutes.

Slowly add 2 cups of the chicken broth, 1 cup of heavy cream,
1/2 tsp. pepper, and salt to taste (and a little more of the chicken
fat, if you've got SOUL :-)

Cook this until it's thickened, about 5 minutes or until you're
satisfied.

In a big bowl, mix the diced chicken with the sauce, and add a
package of frozen peas, if you like, and a small onion, sliced and
diced very finely.

Pour all of that into an oblong pan (I usually use Pyrex).

Then, get your crust dough out of the fridge. Roll it out between
two sheets of wax paper, until it roughly fits your pan (this isn't
a pie-crust that fits perfectly and is crimped at the edges; it's
just rough. You actually want some edges to fall down into the sauce
and get sort-of "deep-fried" during the final baking - and the more
of that chicken-fat that you put in, the better it will be!)

Then bake the whole kit-and-kaboodle at 425 degrees F., until the
sauce is bubbly, and the crust is golden.

I hope you enjoy it; please experiment with it; and let me know
how it turns out.