Chicken in White Sauce Pie (Roux-Based)

Tempo

1h 20

Picante

Dificuldade

Médio

Rende

4porções

Ingredientes

White sauce

large tbsp butter (~30g)

heaped tbsp plain flour

400ml chicken stock

3 tbsp

double cream (creme de leite fresco)

A squeeze of lemon juice

sprig fresh tarragon (estragão) — or 1 sprig rosemary as substitute

Filling

medium leek (alho-poró), sliced and diced

A handful of button mushrooms, wiped and quartered

400g cooked chicken (leftover roast or poached), shredded

100g bacon in cubes (toucinho em cubos), or chopped pancetta

Extra butter for frying (~15g)

Pastry

Shortcrust pastry — enough for shell + lid (~500g)

medium free-range egg, beaten (for glazing)

Modo de preparo

01**Preheat oven** to **200°C / fan 180°C / Gas 6**.
02**Make the white sauce.** Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat. Add flour and **cook slowly 3 minutes** — should smell toasty (this is the roux). Pour in chicken stock, turn up heat, **stir constantly until simmering**. Add the cream; gently simmer until **the sauce has a syrupy consistency**. Add lemon juice and tarragon. Turn off heat. (This is essentially a velouté — the foundation of a great chicken pie.)
03**Fry the filling.** In another pan, gently fry the bacon, leek, and mushrooms in a knob of butter for **5 minutes**. Add the cooked shredded chicken. Add this mixture to the white sauce. Stir to combine.
04**Cool slightly** while you prepare the pastry (don't fully cool — warm is fine here since pastry goes around it).
05**Line a buttered ovenproof dish** with rolled-out pastry. Add the chicken-in-white-sauce filling.
06**Top with pastry.** Roll the second piece, lay over the filling. Trim edges. Use trimmings to make decorative cut-outs on top.
07**Vent and glaze.** Cut 2-3 small steam holes. Brush with beaten egg.
08**Bake.** **AFO 200°C, 25-35 minutes** until top is nicely browned and filling is **piping hot**.
09**Rest 5-10 minutes** before slicing — the white sauce is volcanic straight from oven.

Chicken in White Sauce Pie

The richest of Simon's three pies — a roux-based béchamel-style white sauce with chicken stock and double cream, leek, mushrooms, tarragon, lemon. Designed to use up leftover roast chicken. Tarragon-and-cream signature.

Heat: 0/5. No chile.

Serving

Mashed potatoes, peas, a glass of crisp white wine.

Notes

The roux step matters. Cook the flour-butter slowly until it smells toasty — undercooked roux gives a raw-flour taste in the finished sauce.
Tarragon and chicken is one of the great culinary pairings. Don't substitute lazily — fresh tarragon if at all possible. Dried tarragon (1 tsp) works; rosemary as the alt in the recipe is a reasonable backup if no tarragon at all.
Shredded chicken from a roast is the ideal filling. The brown bits and skin (chopped fine) add character. If using poached or cooked from raw, the dish is fine but slightly less savory.
Lemon juice is a small but important brightener — without it the sauce is flat.
Compared to the other two pies (frango-coxa_chicken-and-leek-pie.md, frango-coxa_chicken-pie.md): this is the richest, most velouté-driven, leftover-friendly version. The Baker Brothers is the most refined; the plain old is the simplest.
Make-ahead. Filling keeps 2 days in fridge. Assemble and bake fresh.
Freezer-kit version: make the filling, cool, freeze in a freezer container. Up to 3 months. Thaw overnight, then assemble pie with fresh pastry and bake.
Variations: add a handful of frozen peas at step 3. Add 100g cooked ham (presunto) for a chicken-and-ham pie variant.