Chicken pie that's better than his mum's

The idea for Chicken Pie for dinner came about when I had one chicken thigh fillet left over from a previous meal.  So I looked up the ever-reliable Taste recipe website and found this idea for a pie.  All well and good, except that I needed another chicken thigh.

Fast forward to last night at the local (overcrowded) supermarket and the massive queue/scrum at the deli counter. I only needed one thigh fillet, so there should have been an Express lane for small purchases.  No such luck, and the hair-netted serving lady wasn't going to be serving me anytime soon.  So I ended up buying a pre-packaged tray of six chicken thighs from the refrigerated cabinet.

Looks like Chicken Pie is going to be on the menu for the rest of the week. Good thing it's a superb recipe.

 Chicken, mushroom and bacon pie
serves 2

Ingredients
2 (approx 100g each) chicken thigh fillets, trimmed, thinly sliced across the grain
2 tblsp plain flour
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tblsp olive oil
1 small leek, trimmed, halved, washed, thinly sliced
2 rashers bacon, finely chopped
100g button mushrooms, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons chicken stock
2 sheets frozen ready-rolled puff pastry, partially thawed

Method
1. Prepare 2 pie pans, each about 1-cup capacity, by placing them on a baking tray. Alternatively, you could make a 1 large pie using a 2-cup capacity pie dish. Preheat oven to 200 deg C.

2. Meanwhile, place chicken, flour and paprika in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Heat oil in a small non-stick frying pan over high heat. Add chicken. Cook, tossing often, for 4 minutes or until browned. Remove to a bowl.

3. Reduce heat to medium. Add leek and bacon to pan. Cook for 1 minute or until leek is soft. Add mushrooms and stock. Return chicken to pan. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes or until sauce thickens. Set aside for 5 minutes.

4. Spoon warm chicken filling into pie pans. Cut a round from the puff pastry to cover each pie pan. Place over the filling, pressing the pastry edges over the rim of the pan to enclose. Trim off excess puff pastry. Cut 2 or 3 small air vents in the pie top. Brush top with water and season with salt and pepper. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden. Serve.

Ingredients - looks very 'homestyle country', doesn't it?

There is a bit of chopping of ingredients required; and the chicken is coated with flour and paprika to give it more flavour in the pie

After cooking the chicken, leek, bacon and mushrooms in a frypan, everything is poured into a pie dish and topped with puff pastry.

The pie is a gorgeous, warming and delicious meal.  The other half said it was better than his mum's version.  I haven't tasted hers, but I'm sure it's good, so 'mine' must be even better!