'I love my chicken pie'.....Crow Black Chicken sung by Ry Cooder...

We often listen to Mike's old music in the menage and enjoy whiling away the evening with his 'crooners' entertaining us....Crow Black Chicken is a favourite...

Schools back so the steady stream of kids through our doors and onto our dinner table ceases and we are left with a pile of forgotten socks, pajamas and plastic toys and fond memories of the summer children's meals that we have prepared in abundance over the last few months....

Simple healthy fare to keep the energy levels high after a day of snacking on bread and various in the back seat of the car...carrot sticks, cucumber slices, strawberries, broccoli and cubed potatoes accompanied by the household classic Chicken Pie....

This pie has it origins in the kitchen of a Champagne making English friend who used to make it in a deep casserole dish with the pastry laid over the top as a blanket to hide the goodies beneath. My children have always loved it and we have adapted this original recipe to make a more Kiwi style pie...

I sometimes make small individual pies but mostly one large pie as one piece is invariably not enough.
Given that the children I am feeding come from all over the world and can be anything from 1 to 15 years old I remain amazed that I have had very few out and out rejections. Mostly the pie is greeted with a slight apprehension but once tasted the strike rate of a clean plate is about 98%! Mum's and Dad's alike line up for the odd mouthful and comments about 'the best Chicken Pie I have ever had' are often bantered about the table...the recipe requests follow....

The only complicated thing about this pie is the pastry...that is finding good enough shop brought flaky pastry. The same friend who introduced my children to her chicken pie also give me the best piece of advice when I first moved to France..."never make your own pastry in France...the shop brought ready rolled pastry is so good that there is absolutely no need". And as pastry hates a hot kitchen I feel more than justified in doing exactly that....and the other thing is that I do tend to make it up as I go along so quantities are not accurate but any reasonable cook can adapt to suit...

'CROW BLACK CHICKEN PIE'

a small onion chopped finely
3 large chicken breasts cut into cubes
creme fraiche or double cream
potatoes and carrots cubed and cooked till tender with a few peas or small broccoli flowers.
approx 1 cup of chicken stock...preferably homemade but reconstituted cubes are fine...use less salt.
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 200 deg Celsius

1. Fry the onions in a deep sided frying pan and add chicken pieces cooking till white but not brown.
2. Boil potatoes and carrots in boiling water in a separate pot.
3. Put 2 or 3 heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche or 1/2 a cup of cream into the pan with the chicken and onions and stir to combine.
4. Add a couple of scoops of chicken stock to create a nice thin sauce when mixed with the cream.
5.  Add peas and broccoli to the potatoes and cook for 5 mins.
6. Leave the chicken mix to boil gently while the vegetables cook adding more stock or water to keep the consistency of the sauce runny. Season to taste.
7. Drain the vegetables reserving some of the vegetable water to add to the chicken to thin the sauce if needed. A runnier sauce will thicken once cooked in the pastry...should be the consistency of pre-whipped double cream. Set aside to cool.
8. Line a large flan or pie dish with baking paper then ready rolled pastry and cut into a circle to fit.
9. Fill pie dish with chicken mixture.
10. Using a second pastry sheet cut to fit the top of the pie being generous on the edges and pinching it together to seal the creamy chicken mix inside. Decorate with any small pieces of pastry if you fancy.
11. Brush the pie with milk and cook in preheated oven for 20 mins...check then for a further 5 mins if need be.
12. Serve generous slices to hungry children and watch it disappear...great next day reheated too...

pics to follow...

My Summer Garden/Mon Jardin d'ete

A few snaps of the garden over summer...loving the warmth....living from the garden and living in the garden!!

Harvest time is upon us!! C'est temps pour la Vendage....

The face of Champagne has changed over the last few days as the pickers arrive with various sleeping arrangements attached and proceed to fill the landscape with an inordinate amount of white vans, caravans and slow moving tractors laden with coloured bins full of the seasons harvest...

 The grapes are hand picked as required by law...and then carried carefully [and often very very slowly!!] off to the press to have the juices extracted that create the areas treasure that is Champagne....

Due to our ridiculously hot Easter and beyond the harvest begins a month earlier than normal. The children are still on holidays and the precious vacation month of August is interrupted by the hardest physical job of the year. They begin in torrential rain and then as the days past the sun came out and they will soon forget the miserable beginnings....so the vineyards are now completely full of vehicles various, bins of grapes aplenty....

The harvest employs numerous pickers pulled from all walks of life...there never seems to be enough hands to go around and the vines become a hive of activity...as one would expect there is also plenty of activity behind the scenes preparing breakfast lunch and dinner for the pickers, drivers and various other workers who work hard out from 4am till 11pm making sure that the juice is carefully extracted, the bins are cleaned and sterile ready for the next day, the slurry of grape skins is removed from the press etc etc

The meals are served at the vineyard at lunchtime and as you pass by you see brightly coloured lightly clad pickers gathered around the plastic easy ups out of the sun tucking into a full on 4 course meal with wine to give them the energy to get through the afternoon...this is repeated at the end of the day at local restaurants and Champagne houses where everyone exchanges tales of the day with humour and hilarity over a glass of bubbly or red wine before crashing exhausted into a makeshift bed somewhere in a hidden corner of Champagne...

 The supermarkets specialise in bulk buy over this period and you can buy all of the normal seasonal vegetables, meats, cheeses and desserts on a scale that is hard to imagine...budgets are strictly adhered to so the food is simple, plentiful and fresh...preparation kept to the minimum with roast chicken, cold meats, slow cooked casseroles, potatoes, quiches, pasta, salads and large platters of classic cheeses with fruit or custard tarts washed down with good cheap plentiful red wine or the growers own Champagne....

A special time of the year where all hands work the wheel for 10 days. Every decent sized village in Champagne has a Cooperative Agricole where those who have grapes to press in smaller quantities use a communal press to maximize the facility while minimalising the financial outlay. This Champagne is often labelled and sold but more often left unlabelled and used for one's own families consumption....never legally able to be gifted but only to be drunk whilst a family member is present...unlabelled Champagne is prized in our house and we have fond memories of Madam Paris visiting with newspaper wrapped chilled bottles on many an occasion...Mothers Day, birthdays, Christmas morning to name a few...

 Then it all comes to an end and exhausted the pickers move on slowly trailing across the countryside to the next harvest region about to come into season...apples in Normandy, grapes in the Alsace....the rubbish is cleared from the caravan sites, the feilds turn back to their original green grassy selves and the supermarkets start thinking about 'Reentre'. The bulk buy is slowly replaced with 'Back to School' specials...clothing, new shoes,stationary, books, computers and lunch box fillers....
And the sun still continues to shine....long may it continue!!