Dispatch no. 9: Late Winter
Ode to Georgia | A Tale of Three (savory, cozy) Pies| One Pie Crust, Three Ways
the classic chicken pot pie of my childhood gets an update | + a seafood version ! | + a vegetable version !
stories and musings
I’m not sure there is any food quite as comforting as a chicken pot pie. but maybe that’s just me. the only time i ever really had chicken pot pie as a kid was when Georgia would babysit, it being her favorite. i only got to have it by way of proximity and it always felt like the most special treat, possibly because having Georgia all to myself (i was the youngest of four children) did too.
Granted, my mom got these chicken pot pies from the frozen food section of the grocery store — but the transformation from icy cardboard box to just out of the oven and slid onto my plate (these were personal pot pies, mind you) was nothing short of a miracle. the sight of the golden brown pastry, the scent of buttery goodness wafting through the kitchen, some of the piping hot creamy filling escaping from between the little foil pie plate and the crust onto my dinner plate, scooped up on my finger.
On these occasions, Georgia and i would sit next to each other at the table in our cheery yellow kitchen, eating our pies side by side after letting them cool for a few minutes, chatting away. to be honest i think it was mostly me who was doing the chatting, and the endless asking (i was probably not much older than 6 or 7), with Georgia nodding and offering me an agreeable Mmmm-hmmm every now and then. i wanted to know everything about who Georgia was on the days when she wasn’t with us. i wanted to know what she did with the bacon fat she asked my mom to save for her. i wanted to know what her son Peter with the same name as my brother Peter liked to eat. i asked her to tell me again and again about the time during a storm that a ball of lightning came into her bedroom, careening around the walls, and went out the window again, harming nothing. and every time she told me that story she would say it just went to show that there’s no point in worrying, you can never know what’s going to happen next.
Georgia was neat and slim and quiet and elegant and smelled faintly of castor oil when i hugged her around her waist. she wore thin wool cardigans, even in the summer. when something made her laugh, she couldn’t stop, and she would double over, weakly covering her mouth to try to get herself to. i was always trying to make her laugh.
Georgia felt like home to me, even though my actual home certainly wasn’t lacking in any way. i was a happy kid. it’s just that “home” at that point was somewhat unpredictable — what with my charismatic and ambitious father running for office, my captivating mother required to be by his side on the campaign trail, my older siblings doing older sibling things with their friends. But Georgia was always the same, reliably her perfect self, and to me the epitome of comfort and reassurance.
So, what was it, exactly — was it the chicken pot pie or was it Georgia? well, it was both, of course, but also it doesn’t really matter — because the happy cozy feeling of a chicken pot pie still makes me think of my beloved Georgia to this day.
Chicken, Leek + Bacon pie — with the easiest half-butter/half-lard pie crust!
The three savory winter pies i am sharing here — Chicken, Leek + Bacon; Seafood, Fennel + Pernod; Caramelized Cabbage, Shiitake + Pine Nut — are endlessly adaptable but i think that these particular filling combinations are exceptional. The pie crusts, too, are interchangeable — but i like the ones i’ve chosen to correspond to the fillings.
The chicken, leek + bacon pie is not the chicken pot pie of my (or likely your) childhood, but the comfort level is on a par. while i will always love the cubed carrots and peas of the classic version, here the charred leeks add a (local + seasonal, of course) depth of flavor and the bacon adds a welcome smokiness. for those of you who would rather skip the pork (i’m looking at you, allen ;-), shiitakes or other cultivated or wild mushrooms, sauteed until crispy, are a perfect substitute. speaking of pork, i am a fan, but only if it is pork from happy pigs raised on pasture and fed only the best scraps, you know? ;-)