Thursday, March 16, 2017

Chicken Cheese mini-pies ミニパイ

This is a drinking snack my wife came up with. It goes well with red wine and is also a means of "leftovers" control. This is vaguely based on the recipe she saw on line but she essentially made this without a recipe. The picture shows two mini-pies. The square one on the left is filled with cheese and jalapeno pepper. The round one on the right is filled with minced barbecue chicken, caramelized onion, and cheese.


Although the focus of the exercise was on making the chicken pies, my wife found herself out of chicken filling but with a fair amount of defrosted pie dough left. So "on-the-fly" she came up with the cheese filling so as not to waste the dough. Although she carefully sealed the edges of the pie, most of the cheese melted out (left) leaving a hollow shell with a  nice cheesy jalapeno flavor behind. The chicken filling stayed in the pie (right).


Ingredients:

Crust:
A package of frozen pie dough thawed.

Filling for chicken pies:
Cooked chicken (we used leftover dark meat from the barbecue the prior weekend). (This is where the leftover control comes in), 2 legs, finely chopped.
Cheese, grated,
Chopped arugula (or spinach)
Onion, half, medium, finely chopped and caramelized

Filling for cheese pies:
grated cheddar and smoked Gouda cheese
Jalapeno finely minced

Mixture of flour and water to seal the two pieces of pie dough.

Directions:
For the chicken pies, caramelize and cool the onions, finely mince the cooked chicken, mince the arugula and grate the cheese.
Mix all the ingredients in a bowel. For the cheese pies, grate the two cheeses and mix with the jalapeno.
For both types of pies roll out the defrosted dough and cut into circles of whatever size you like.
Put a scoop of the chicken or cheese mixture on the bottom round (#1) and top with another round of pastry (#2).
Use the paste mixture to seal the edges and crimp with fork (#3).
Cook for 18 to 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven until golden brown (#4).


The chicken pies were quite good. The smokey barbecue flavor blended with the caramelized onions and the cheddar cheese to make a very hearty and satisfying taste. The cheese pies were a bit less successful. Although they were sealed the jalapeno cheese filling melted and seeped out. Although they were basically hollow they still tasted good. The cheesy and fresh pepper flavors permeated the flaky dough. Both were a good snack with a glass of wine.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I make these every once and a while for dinner, often to use up left overs. Basically, Cornish pasties.

I'm French Canadian by decent and my Mom used to make Pets de sœurs with left over pie doough. Pets de sœurs translates at "Nun's farts" - an inside Catholic joke. Leftover pie dough is used to make cinnamon and sugar pinwheels.

Rob in Maine

Uncle N said...

Thank you for the comment. I will pass this to my wife. N