Not Chicken Pot Pie

I grew up thinking everyone rolled out pastry with a milk bottle. We didn’t own a rolling pin and I didn’t know they existed for a long time. Today I used that childhood skill to roll out the pastry for a Ham, Broccoli and Corn Pot Pie, but instead of a milk bottle, I used the grown-up version…a wine bottle. 

We are still traveling and using whatever meagre baking utensils we can find. The recipe came from a Southern Living magazine from March 2014. 

Place a 10 oz freezer package thawed chopped broccoli into a greased 11″ x 7″ baking dish, or a 9″ pie dish. Add a 11 oz can sweet corn, drained, 10 1/2 oz can cream of mushroom soup, 2 cups diced ham, 2 cups grated Cheddar cheese, 8 oz sour cream, and 1/2 tsp dried mustard. Stir. Roll and cut a refrigerated pie crust to shape and place over filling. Crimp edges, cut slits in the top and bake at 200C/400F for 35 minutes. 

We adapted this as we don’t use canned soup. I made a white sauce instead with some added chicken stock. We used fresh broccoli but steamed it for a couple of minutes. Let them both cool. I can’t imagine using 2 cups of cheese in anything so that was cut to 1 cup, ditto with the ham, and we used Southwest Spicy Mustard. Yum! 

We made our own pastry with 1 cup all purpose flour and 1/2 cup butter. Let it rest for at least 30 minutes. Roll out with whatever you have. 

Bake!

This turned out really well and we both enjoyed it. The pastry was light and crumbly even though it wouldn’t win any beauty contests. There was lots of flavour and different textures. We will be making this again possibly without the meat. I like the idea that you can use pre-made ingredients if you don’t have time or experience, but still have a home-baked pie. You don’t have to make everything from scratch to have a home-made pie. Whatever works best for you. 

Happy baking!

Cheryl and Becky