Chicken, Leek And Mushroom Pies

 

Just made chicken, leek and mushroom pies with homegrown leeks, beans and carrots. It tasted soo good!

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
1 onion
3 leeks
3 tbs flour
8 button mushrooms
3 cups chicken stock
150ml cream
thyme
puff pastry

Preparation:

Brown chicken. Put to one side. Cook onion and leeks until soft. Add flour, stirring well. Add 2 cups of stock a little at a time. Return the chicken to the pan along with the mushrooms. Slowly add the 3rd cup of stock until desired consistency is reached. Add thyme and cream. Cook uncovered on medium heat for 10-15 mins. Spoon into ramekins (the mixture made 7 for me). Top with ready made puff pastry. Cook at 200 degrees celsius for 25 mins (190 degrees for fan forced ovens). Serve with your favourite veg. 🙂

Help!

Help! What is wrong with my carrots?! These are my Dutch carrots. The soil they grew in is incredibly fliable so they shouldn’t have had any trouble pushing through. I’ve read that you should keep your carrots on the dry side to encourage them to dig deep for water. Perhaps they were too dry and decided to dig sideways for water?? They taste yummy still but it’s hard to get all the dirt out from their intricate shapes. Straight carrots would be a lot easier!

Get Out Of My Space!

I think the number one lesson I learnt from my first ever crop of veggies was to give them space. It got much more crowded than this in my little veggie box once the celery took off and the broccoli all got so big they started falling over. I was aware of the temptations of overcrowding when I planted the seedlings but still did it! You get so many seedlings in a punnet, I just couldn’t bear to throw any away! Everything did grow fairly big (except for the carrots – see my earlier post) so it could’ve been much worse, but my other problem was eating it all in time! I planted way to much bok choy and lettuce in my second veggie box and ended up giving lots away and throwing lots out. I hate wasting food! So I’m taking the “less is more” philosophy for my next crop.

Carrots!

Well, first attempt of carrots wasn’t the best success but they were still delicious! My fault here was that I didn’t notice that I planted the carrots bunched together. The seedlings were so tiny that I thought I was planting individual carrots into each hole, but I was actually planting 3 or 4! So they all wound around each other in the fight to dig down to more water. I’ve learnt my lesson and looking forward to some epic carrots this season!

Vegie box #1

From left to right: Broccoli, celery, dutch carrots, baby carrots.

One month after planting seedlings. They loved the 2 soil/3 manure combination of soil we brought in! It was so exciting watching them shoot up so fast!