Creole Chicken Pie

Baking tool:

• a (fluted) loose-based baking tin,
• top 28 cm /underside 26 cm /rim 2,5 cm,
• greased with butter

 

Filling:

• 650 g chicken leg, bay leaf, pepper, salt
• 30 g butter
• 200 g minced green bell pepper
• 150 g minced peeled celery
• 75 g minced onion
• 150 g cooked ham in cubes
• 1 minced red pepper (with or without seeds)
• 2 tablespoons dried tomato on oil in pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 30 g plain flour
• 100 ml broth of the chicken leg

 

Dough:

• 50 g vegetable fat for deep frying
• 250 g plain flour
• 3 g salt
• 1 egg, mixed with water unto 150 ml
• 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

On top:

• 1 egg , beaten

Creole chicken pie from the Far South of America, particularly Louisiana. A melting pot of especially French, Spanish and African culinary influences. But in the first place an ‘ebony’ cuisine, designed by black female cooks with a lot of dedication and fantasy. White women of the South left their kitchen and their children to the care of their black home helps als long as the years 60 of last century. In her touching book The Help (2009) Kathryn Stocket shows how things were at the time of Martin Luther King. At that time too the first cookbook was published written by a black author: Freda DeKnight, who had collected extraordinary Negro recipes for The Ebony Cookbook, a date with a dish (Chicago 1962). This recipe is based on that book.

• Cook chicken with 250 ml water, bay leaf, pepper and salt 20 minutes in a pressure cooker.
• Melt butter. Sauté bell pepper, celery and onion, called Holy Trinity and every true-born American Creole recipe starts with it. Add ham with pepper, tomato and thyme. Sauté for a moment. Stir the flour in it and then gradually the broth. Let simmer stirring to obtain a thick sauce. Add chicken pieces without bones. Leave to cool.
• Preheat the oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas 6.
• Cut the fat in small pieces into the salted flour. Rub with fingertips to fine crumbs. Whisk the egg with water and vinegar. Stir through the flour crumbs until all liquid is absorbed. Press the granular substance to a ball; roll out 2/3 onto a floured surface to a 32 cm circle. Line the tin. Brusch with egg. Roll out the rest of the dough to a 28 cm circle. Make 6 holes in it with a biscuit cutter.
• Scoop the filling into the dough case. Cover with the smaller circle. Press the rim, brush with egg; decorate with the dough cuttings, brush with egg again.
• Bake 40-45 minutes on the lowest shelf of the oven.