Chicken and Mushroom Pot Pies

Loving this light and crispy, with a distinctly buttery flaky pastry as the main character of my whole chicken and mushroom pot pies. Added on some vivid green basil leave, fresh from my garden, indeed feeling a little bit of glory.

The toughest part in the whole baking process is the rolling and folding pastry sheet process. My friends always wonder, why don't I just but the ready made pastry sheet from supermarket?? The answer is definitely a "No" as you do not know whether they really using the real butter or just the margarine. And please do not use any margarine into any of your own bakes as it will endanger your health.

Well, cooking the chicken and mushroom job is way too easy but the tough part is the cutting progress. It took me about an hour just to cut nicely of all the ingredients to cook this chicken. OMG, cooking them are just used up 10 minutes.

Relook this making pastry process from scratch, although need to allow plenty of time, puff pastry does not require continuous work, just few minutes and then re-rolling about every half an hour. It's essential that everything be kept cold when making this puff pastry. Unfortunately the weather in Malaysia is just too hot, I need to chase with time as the butter inside will be melted so quickly.

Cut the pastry into half to see what's underneath

See below for Hankerie's recipe

Mushroom chicken

1. 500g chicken
2. 4 shitaki mushrooms
3. 1 cans of button mushroom (I used preserved)
4. 1 potato
5. 1 carrot
6. 1 onion
7. few stalk of spring onion
8. Oyster sauce 
9. pinch of salt
10. soya sauce
11. dark soya sauce

Puff Pastry

Ingredients:

1. 225g plain flour
2. pinch of salt
3. 225g chilling butter cubes
4. 150ml chilled water

Method:

1. Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl.
2. Rub the butter cubes into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
3. Put the mixture on top of a plastic sheet and cover with another plastic sheet. Roll into sheet to around 25 cm squarish.
4. Fold the lower third of the pastry over the centre third, and the top third of the pastry down over that. 
5. Wrap it with cling film and store in fridge at least 30 minutes.
6. Take out from fridge. Roll it into flat sheet again and repeat the step 4 above.
7. Repeat step 5 and 6 again.
8. Cut the pastry sheet into the mold shape by using same size cookie cutter..
9. Scope the mushroom chicken into dish and cover with pastry.
10. Send into oven and back for 20 minutes ontil the pastry turn brown and flaky look.
11. Cool and decorate them with own grow basil leaves as topping.