Sunday, February 12, 2006

Best non-Thanksgiving Meal from my Jersey Kitchen

I've recently begun a subscription to Cook's Illustrated, a magazine from the America's Test Kitchen folks on PBS. The magazine has tons of detailed explanations and each recipe is the result of many experiments. They screw things up so you don't have to. Such detail means that each magazine only has a handful of recipes, but one in particular caught my eye. Seeing as we were due for a blizzard up here in the New York area, I decided to spend a few hours in the kitchen, creating the Skillet Chicken Pot Pie from Cook's Illustrated.



Holy crap. This is the best thing to ever come out of my kitchen (not counting Thanksgiving), and I've been in this apartment for about 2 1/2 years. I ain't exaggerating here, folks. This is it. This was the best pot pie that I've ever had, including any that I've had at fancy-schmancy restaurants.

However, it is exceedingly time-intensive. First you have to pan-sear the chicken, then roast it with the vegetables, then create the sauce deglazing the pan with broth and cream, and assemble with a homemade crust. Doing all the steps using the same oven-proof skillet speeds things up a bit, but it still takes roughly 2-3 hours. But it's worth it. It's so, so worth it. I can't emphasize enough how worth it this dish is. This is the dish you bust out when you want to impress someone. In my case, the impressee was a farmboy from Iowa, so this was perfect. He was impressed. He already had leftovers for lunch, and he's petitioning for more leftovers for dinner.

The inside is the simple combination of roast chicken, carrots, celery, onions (white and pearl), with the gravy sauce (drippings, broth, and a bit of cream). The crust was unbelievably flaky, thanks to ice cold butter and my trusty cuisinart.

I can't even come up with anything witty to say. The simplicity and complexity of the taste blew me away. Yum.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate that you post about all these things and I never get to taste them. I wish the impressee were your hunk-friend, Tood.

I think I like PBS cooking shows even better than Food Network ones. Come to think of it, I've watched cooking shows on PBS for as long as I can remember.

You should post recipes if they are worth it. And if I might actually cook them.

krys said...

It is worth it, but I didn't want to post the recipe since it isn't available free online. It's available through their website or magazine. I guess I should research copyright law.

PBS cooking shows are so much better than Food Network cooking shows. I watch them both though.

I'll make this again for a dinner party.

Anonymous said...

I agree - You posted recipes back when you first started the blog. Why no more?

krys said...

I did a little more research on copyright law, and I don't really feel comfy posting recipes. With the ones that I originally posted, you'll see those edited soon to links where they were originally found.