Kitchen3N

Recipes and food fun from Apt 3N

Mini Turkey Pot Pies

IMG_3757

Confession: I’ve never made an actual pot pie. Like with the flaky crust and roux (butter and flour mixture) thickened meat and vegetable filling. It just wasn’t something that was a regular on our dinner table. And given my zabihah-halal dietary restriction, ordering chicken pot pie at any ol’ restaurant just wouldn’t do. But, one day last summer (or was it two summers ago?) I was taking my New York-obsessed-child-prodigy of a niece around the city. After an eventful day of Top of the Rock, TKOs at Bouchon Bakery, and bumping into Naomi Watts in Soho, we were making our way through Chelsea Market and (I) decided we would have a well deserved sit down lunch at the green table.

IMG_3748

Everything was so good. I couldn’t eat my salad fast enough. That’s right. The salad. But when my entree came out, it knocked me out of my seat it was so good. A mushroom pot pie. It was so earthy, so filling, so delicious. Not at all bland as I’d envisioned pot pies to be (I’m sorry! It’s just all the times I’ve watched it being made, there were few flavorings beyond chicken stock, salt, pepper and parsley.) This one, I could tell was made with the broth from reconstituting porcini mushrooms. That’s what gave it that special umami note.

IMG_3749

I took a shortcut with these little guys since I had some puff pastry sheets in the freezer and 0.0000018394 minutes these days for anything. I didn’t even make a proper roux for the filling. I simply sauteed the awesome Honest Chops ground turkey with onions, carrots and garlic. Added some dried thyme, salt and pepper. Then vegetable stock for moisture and half a package of cream cheese for creaminess. At the end, some frozen peas and chopped parsley for color and pizazz.

IMG_3751

I’ve been dying to showcase this beautiful muffin pan from Anthropologie that my dear friend Jaf had gotten me for my birthday ages ago. Oh, Anthropologie, why can’t you have more stuff on sale?

IMG_3765

You can pretty much en robe anything in puff pastry and it will be delectable. It’s just the magical combination of butter, flour and salt. But you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that at our house, these were topped with Sriracha, right? Don’t worry – you have my permission to do the same.

IMG_3782

Ingredients

  • 3 tbsp olive oil (not extra virgin)
  • 1 small yellow onion, diced small
  • 2 thin carrots (or 1 large), diced small
  • 1 lb ground turkey (white meat)
  • 2 large, fresh cloves of garlic, minced (garlic is fresh when the bulbs are held together quite tightly)
  • 3/4 tsp dried thyme
  • 3/4 tsp salt (more or less depending on your stock)
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup vegetable or chicken stock (can use water if needed – just check the seasoning at the end)
  • 1/2 cup frozen peas
  • 4 oz cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
  • 2 puff pastry sheets, defrosted (leave it out on the counter for 2 hrs to defrost)
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray muffin pans with non stick cooking spray.
  2. Heat oil in a large skillet over pretty high heat. Add onions, carrots and meat, breaking up the chunks of meat. Cook until meat is no longer pink, 5-7 minutes. Next add the garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Stir until thoroughly combined. Add stock and lower the heat to medium. Let cook 2-3 minutes until liquid reduces a bit. Add peas and cook for 1 more minutes. Turn off the heat and add the cream cheese and parsley. Stir until cream cheese has blended in and parsley is incorporated. Set aside.
  3. On a floured surface, roll out one sheet of the puff pastry until it’s slightly larger than the area of the muffin pan. Using a sharp knife, cut out 6 or 12 rectangles, according to the size of your muffin pan. You should get 12 pot pies out of a regular muffin pan, or 24 mini pot pies from a mini muffin pan. Fill each gap with a rectangle of puff pastry, with the corners hanging extending beyond the borders a bit. Add 1 to 2 tbsp of the meat mixture and fold over the corners to cover as much as possible. Do this for all the rectangles. Brush each one with the egg and bake in the preheated oven for about 18-22 minutes. Tops should be golden when done.

Mughlai Paratha

IMG_2977Mughlai paratha is a traditional flatbread they serve in Bangladesh. It’s a rich dough, stuffed with eggs, cilantro, onions, chili peppers and sometimes ground chicken. It’s pretty hard to track down a recipe. This post is a culmination of verbal consultation with my mother, taste testing at Bengali fast food joints, and YouTube research. It’s a little bit ridiculous, I know, because it’s not exactly a 30 minute meal. There are several steps, practice and patience required. But I figured with the upcoming holiday weekend, we all might have some extra time to get in the kitchen (it’s cold outside!), roll up our sleeves, and maybe even involve the kiddies (my little ones LOVE getting their hands on the rolling pin and dough whenever they can). Also, there will no doubt be lots of leftovers that would work perfectly as a filling for these guys. IMG_2957This baby has been in the pipeline for a looooooong time. I’ve been meaning to make it for ages. I’ve been experimenting recently, since I’ve been getting to know my rolling pin a bit better (hello, pie season). I’ve tried making it with pizza dough (which was delicious but resembled more of a calzone than a traditional mughlai paratha) and all kinds of ghee to flour ratios and cooking techniques (shallow fry, deep fry). And this is the glorious, delicious result! IMG_2958 Yes, that is my Fresh Tinted Lip Balm on my kitchen counter. Where else would it be? IMG_2968 I would love to add more filling. It would make the paratha even more delicious. But I err on the side of less filling just to avoid leakage and it running all over the pan. You, though, are at liberty to experiment with as much filling as you’d like!IMG_2969For those of you who aren’t familiar with ghee, it’s delicious. It’s butter that’s been melted, milk solids removed. You do that by melting a stick (or two) of butter in a small saucepan, allowing the solids to drop to the bottom, then utilizing the melted fat on top. It’s slightly nutty and has a higher burning temperature than regular butter, which is what makes it so great for this recipe (among others: pancakes, mashed potatoes, and so on). So I hope you guys give this recipe a try! And don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t come out super thin the first time. Practice makes perfect!

P.S. I utilized the leftovers from my last Roast Chicken.

P.P.S. How great is this manicure? It’s not gel and it still looks great 1 week later! Check out Primp and Polish at their pop up shop on Crosby street, right next to Bloomingdales.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 2 tbsps ghee (that’s clarified butter – preferable) or oil plus more for the pan
  • 2 tsps salt
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1/2 small red onion, diced
  • 1 green chili or jalapeno, minced (or more if you can handle the heat)
  • a handful of cilantro or parsley, minced (cilantro is preferable)
  • 3/4 cup chicken or 1 chicken breast, diced
  • a pinch of salt

Directions

  1. In a large bowl or stand mixer, combine both flours, ghee or oil, salt and water. Combine with hands or with paddle attachment at low speed until combined. If it looks wet, don’t worry. You’ll be adding more flour when rolling it out. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest while you prepare the other ingredients (20 minutes to 2 hours).
  2. Whisk eggs, onion, green chili or jalapeno, cilantro and chicken together in a separate bowl.
  3. Sprinkle a handful of flour onto a clean surface for rolling out the dough. Grab a handful (baseball size) and roll it around in the flour. Pat with your hand to flatten to a disk. Grab  your rolling pin and aggressively roll back and forth a couple of times. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Do this about two more times. Then, get it really, really thin by rolling outwards on all sides. You’re supposed to get it to look like a rectangle but I am hopeless. Thin and oblong is good enough for me!
  4. Warm a tsp of ghee or oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add two tablespoons of the chicken/egg mixture on top of the paratha. Pull the far side towards you, covering the filling halfway. Pull the bottom side up to meet and slightly overlap the first side, like an envelope. Fold over the right and left sides. Ensure the paratha is sealed. Place in hot skillet. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side, adjusting the heat as necessary. Increase cooking time if your paratha is not as thin as it should be.
  5. Serve with a salad, pico de gallo or Sriracha.