Weekly Recipe: Lactose-Free Chicken, Bacon and Leek Pie

We had friends over for chicken pie. My usual recipe has milk in it and one of my friends is lactose-free, so I found this recipe on Taste.com.au. I heated up a slurp of olive oil in the fry pan and added two chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces.

When it was browned, I took the chicken out of the pan and added 250 g chopped bacon, one sliced leek, two garlic cloves and several summer squashes, cut into pieces, which my mother-in-law had given me from her garden.

That was cooked for 5 min or so and then I added 1/3 cup of flour, stirred that through, and then two cups of stock. The chicken and four sprigs of thyme went back into the pan and I cooked the whole lot for another 10 min, until it was thickened.

Then I put it in a bowl to cool and stirred in some chopped parsley.

Then I had five toddlers and their parents over for a few hours and things were crazy until about half an hour before my dinner guests were going to arrive. In the whirlwind of cleaning up toys and cake dishes, washing dishes, entertaining Miss 2, pre-heating the oven to 220°C, cutting out circles of puff pastry, filling ramekins with pie filling, placing the pastry on top, brushing with lightly whipped egg, putting the pies in the oven, and making a salad, I failed to take photos. Slacker.

My oven is slow, so they baked for about 45 min. Then they were delicious.