Our third recipe using up the leftover scraps of chicken to make a chicken, ham and leek pie – this time, scrape every last bit of meat you can from the bones. It’s all a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but really, don’t waste any. If you’re running short, just up the amount of ham and leek and no-one will notice. Keep the carcass mind! We’re going to boil it up tomorrow. Quick post tonight.

OH! We have a competition! Win yourself a free Musclefood freezer filler courtesy of your favourite blog, right here

Speaking of pie, I was going to post a lovely recipe for apple and persimmon tart, but see Rob came home and I burnt the custard and er, stabbed him in the back. Well obviously not, but does anyone else listen to The Archers? I don’t, as a rule, but I catch the odd episode as I drive home maybe once a fortnight, and feel like I keep up-to-date with the storylines just fine. Goodness, I nearly drove into a ditch as I listened to the last episode. I haven’t been this moved by the radio since poor Heather-Pet died.

Mind, anyone who thinks The Archers is indicative of country living is completely wrong – well, they got one syllable of that right – there’s nowhere near enough of pointing slackjawed at aeroplanes, showing into holes in the ground and bumming behind hay-bales, for one. Anyway, hush, let’s rush to the recipe!

to make four lots of chicken, ham and leek pie you’ll need:

• every last scrap of leftover chicken or turkey, or, two chicken breasts cut into small chunks – perhaps use two breasts from the many, many breasts you get as part of our freezer filler box from Musclefood (£80 of meat for £50, all pure meats, no fanciness)
• two fancy shallots
• three big leeks (use a mandolin slicer to make short work of slicing these buggers, and better yet, our recommended mandolin is only £9 on Amazon at the moment)
• massive handful of peas
• syn-free wafer thin ham
• two minced garlic cloves
• 440g of Philadelphia lightest (440g being 4 x HEA, and as this makes enough for four pies, it’s one each – otherwise, syn 440g of Philadelphia as 5.5 syns per pie)
• 500g of cottage cheese or Quark – if it’s cottage cheese, you’ll need to make sure you get a syn-free version like Tesco’s Healthy Living
• 100g of Jus-Rol light puff pastry, divided into four – that’s 4 syns each (4.25 syns really but come on)
• an egg
• a bit of milk to loosen it might be needed

TOP TIP: you can make this syn free if you make a bubble and squeak rosti from leftover Sunday veg and use that as a lid instead – you can find the recipe for that right here

to make four lots of chicken, ham and leek pie you should:

• slice up the shallots, leeks, water thin ham, mince the garlic and add in the chicken and sweat it all down in a pan
• slowly stir in the Philadelphia with plenty of black pepper
• slowly stir in the Quark or, if you’re using cottage cheese, blend that first and then pour it in
• let everything simmer very gentle for maybe half an hour, if it is too thic, loosen it off with a splash of milk
• when you’re ready to cook, pour the mixture into four seperate pie dishes or one big Pyrex dish
• stretch out your pastry to cover the top – if you’re struggling, why not just cut out a shape like a star using a cookie cutter (like our post right here) and put that on instead?
• brush with egg and use any leftover pastry to write an obscene word on the top
• bake in the oven until the pie is golden and serve with veg
• easy!

Enjoy! Remember if you’re being a tight-arse with syns you should replace the pastry with the rosti lid – just as nice and a bit more speed too. Oh if you need them, the individual pie dishes can be found here. 

J