Sing-Along Blog Act 2: Fennel Pot Pie

Ahem... hmm... uhhhhhhhh......

Pot pie needs work.

I also need to be a little bit more careful about what I say on this blog... apparently both the MPAA and Martha Stewart are among our viewers. They were waiting for me when I pulled the pot pies out of the oven... the pies take a few seconds to cool down...

Martha Stewart threw a car at my head.

Not to worry, though, because I'm...


You people are so friggin' lucky. If I could sing one dang note you'd be suffering through another video blog today. Instead, I'll watch Dr. Horrible for the sixth time and just TELL you about the pot pie. Rather than singing about it.

Oh - one quick note - I was feeling like an idiot, because several people emailed me and told me "I don't know why you're having such a hard time finding fennel, my local grocery store sells it, and it's not a fancy place or anything." Well, it turns out that my local store does, as well. I tend to go shopping on Fridays, which means that I'm just in the early planning stages for the next week when I hit the supermarket. In this case, it wasn't until Sunday that I learned anything about fennel - including the fact that it is often sold as "sweet anise", which it isn't. However, when I was in the store today to buy some supplemental ingredients for the pot pie, I noticed that the store had sweet anise. Bingo!


Okay, so pot pie. Despite what I said earlier, the pot pie actually came out great! (When I said "pot pie needs work", that was in character - I may not be able to sing, but I am such a good actor that I can even act in writing.) The crust definitely does need work, but I made the executive decision earlier today that rather than making my own crust, I was just going to buy one from the store. (Benjamin is having some butt-related issues which are making him fussy, and I threw my back out in some mysterious way... so spending hours making pie crust didn't really seem to be the order of the day.) Even with store-bought crusts, I mangled them almost beyond recognition.

My wife, bless her heart, said that it "looked homemade" when she saw it. It's really, really nice to have a spouse who is willing to turn your incompetence into a virtue. Long story short, I'm pretty much going to be ignoring the crust part of this pie, and just focus on the filling. Chances are you can make a better crust on your own - or at least go to the supermarket, buy one, and not mess it up.


Basically, there are three steps to putting the pot pie together - filling, sauce, crust. The filling can be whatever you want, pretty much - I decided I wanted to get crazy-go-nuts, and used pretty much everything in my fridge. Here is the final list of what I used. The amounts are, unfortunately, approximate. I will tell you, however, that the ingredients I chopped up gave me enough filling to make a grand total of four pies; I only had two crusts, so I might try my hand at making a crust tomorrow.

THE FILLING

1/2 bulb of fennel
2 medium carrots
2 stalks of celery
4 baby yellow potatoes
2 oz white mushrooms
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 chicken breast

6 cups veggie broth

I just edited that list; I halved all the amounts that I put in based on what I actually used. I wound up with about four pies worth of ingredients, and did my cooking in two batches; the second batch is still in the fridge, waiting to be put in a crust. So, what I've given you above is a good estimate of the amount of ingredients needed to make two pies. Note that I made one vegetarian, one chicken - so that amount of chicken went into a single pie. If you want to make two chicken pot pies, you might want to increase the amount of chicken.

All of the above were chopped fairly roughly - no huge chunks, but I didn't need them minced, either. While you're chopping, get the broth up and simmering.

All of the stuff above is going to get cooked in the broth - but not everything needs to be in for the same length of time. I'm not going to claim that what I did was anything but guesswork, based on other things that I read along the way, but it seemed to work.

First, in went the fennel and potatoes, for seven minutes. Then, I threw in the mushrooms, carrots, and celery; if you're not planning on doing a veggie pie you can throw in the chicken at this point as well. Give that stuff another five minutes, then throw in the frozen ingredients - the peas and corn. Give the whole shebang another five minutes, and then strain out the good stuff from the broth. If you're planning on cooking more, reserve the broth; I wound up reusing mine twice by the end of the evening.


THE SAUCE

5 tbsp butter
5 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups whole milk
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp whole fennel seeds
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp ground coriander
Salt and pepper to taste

As I often do, this pot pie recipe isn't so much 'mine' as an amalgamation of about five different ones that I read through before making this. The sauce, however, is pretty much lifted from this recipe here, so credit where it's due. I started making the sauce when I had just tossed the last ingredients in to the broth, and the timing worked out fine.

We're making a thick, creamy sauce to fill up the empty space in the pie. This sauce is eventually going to get all of the rest of the ingredients you're cooking in the broth mixed in with it, so don't make the mistake I did - you're going to need to use a larger pan for the sauce than for the broth.

Get the butter melted on medium low heat, and toss in the garlic, fennel seeds, and coriander. (This is an application where I don't mind using fennel seeds; I don't think that they're going to raise eyebrows in a chunky pot pie. At the same time, after tasting the results, I might add in a tablespoon of ground fennel as well, to up the ante a bit.) Give it a few stirs, then start slowly whisking in the flour. (For those that don't know, this is called a roux; if you just try to thicken a sauce by tossing flour into it, you get big chunks of flour. Making a roux avoids that.) Eventually, you're going to have something which is almost like a dough; that's when you start adding the milk in. Again, add it slowly, whisking all the while.

After about five minutes, the milk will thicken up. (I couldn't for the life of me tell whether the roux simple took a while to dissolve, or if it was dissolving and then something else was happening afterwords.) While you're waiting for that to happen, go back to the veggies and drain off the broth, coming back to the sauce every once in a while to check that it's thickening. (It didn't feel thick enough to me during the first batch, so I added in another tablespoon of flour. That might have been unnecessary.) Once it's thickened, toss in the lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Give the whole shebang a final mix or two; the sauce should be almost as thick as pancake batter - it should stick to the whisk but slowly drip off. When you're there, toss in the filling ingredients, and stir the whole thing until the sauce is completely coating everything else.



THE CRUST

Like I said, I'm not really going to go into the crust too much. Once you've got the sauce made, pour it into the crust, close it up, and put it in the oven at 375 for about 40 minutes. Make sure to let it cool for a while before you serve it - the thick sauce in there is going to be mouth napalm when it comes out of the oven.


I really enjoyed making this, and pot pie is something that I don't really eat enough of. I strongly encourage you to read this post for the process, but not for the specifics; the filling can really be just about anything that your little heart desires. I can definitely see cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, shrimp, or any of a hundred other things going really well in there (and frankly, I can't really believe that I didn't add onion.) I would take an educated guess that I wound up with slightly more than five cups, total, of filling, so if you aim for around there you should be in the right ballpark whatever stuff you choose to use. I don't think I had a particular reason for using frozen peas and carrots rather than canned; I must have read a recipe that called for them, and decided to go that way.

I wouldn't be afraid of over-spicing this; as I said, I feel like I could have added another tablespoon of fennel - or more - to good effect. All in all, I'm surprised at how well this came out, for something fairly complex that I've never done before; I really expected, for whatever reason, for the whole thing to turn into an utter disaster. It was much, much easier than I expected, and I strongly recommend that you try it at some point.

I actually have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. Anyone have any bright ideas? Anyone know any good recipes for soups that use fennel?