Chicken Pie

Ingredients:
3 rashers streaky beef bacon, cut or scissored into 2.5cm strips
1 tsp garlic oil
125g mushrooms, sliced into 5mm pieces
250g chicken thigh fillets cut into 2.5cm pieces
25g flour
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 Tbsp butter
300ml hot chicken stock
1 Tbsp Marsala
1 x 375g (23 x 40cm) sheet all-butter ready-rolled puff pastry

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C.
2. In a heavy-based frying pan, fry the beef bacon strips in the oil until beginning to crisp, then add the sliced mushrooms and soften them in the pan with the bacon.
3. Turn the chicken strips in the flour & thyme, and then melt the butter in the bacon-and-mushroom pan before adding the floury chicken and all the flour left in the bag. Stir around with the bacon and mushrooms until the chicken begins to colour.
4. Pour in the hot stock and Marsala, stirring to form a sauce, and let this bubble away for about 5 minutes.
5. Take two 300ml pie-pots and make a pastry rim for each one (an approx. 1cm strip curled around the top of each pot). Dampen the edges with a little water to make the pastry stick.
6. Cut a circle bigger than the top of each pie-pot for the lid, and then divide the chicken filling between the two pots.
7. Dampen the rim of the pastry again and then pop on the lid of each pie, sealing the edges with fingers or the underneath of the prongs of a fork.
8. Cook the pies for about 20 minutes.

Serving Size : Serves 2