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random musings of a crazy cat lady

Sunday, October 21, 2012

White Bean, Swiss Chard, and Pancetta Pot Pie

The students have been on a pie kick.  In addition to the pie contest last weekend, they've been bringing in pies during the week.  All this pie has whetted my appetite for more and temporarily overcome both my diet and my usual dislike of making pie crust.  When Smitten Kitchen published a recipe for a swiss chard, pancetta and white bean pot pie, I knew I had to make it.  I love soup with chard, beans and sausage.  This sounded like a more decadent cousin.  I also like the idea of making anything into a pot pie.
I'm not going to paste the recipe here since it's pretty long.  Go look at the link if you're interested.  Basically, you make the dough for the top crust, then you saute pancetta, then onions/celery/carrots/garlic, then add chopped up swiss chard and cook it until it's softened.  The veggies are removed from the pot and a sauce is then prepared from a roux and chicken broth.  The sauce, veggies, and cannellini beans are combined, placed into individual ramekins, and then covered with the crust dough and baked.

It's not a quick recipe.  The dough needs to rest for an hour in the fridge, and the rest of the prep is steppy and each step takes at least ten minutes.  I wouldn't make it for a quick after work dinner, that's for sure.  I made the crust and prepped the chard in between rounds of painting my entryway. 
I bought a massive bunch of chard, and I used the stems, so I had probably twice as much chard as the recipe, and used two cans of beans instead of 1 1/3 cans.  So I had slightly more filling than the original recipe.  I left all the other ingredients the same, but substituted an extra carrot for the celery.  I put the mix into a 9" x 13" casserole dish and rolled the dough out into a rectangle just slightly larger.  I put it on top and cut some vents in it, and set it on top of a cookie sheet to contain any overflows.  It took about 40 minutes to bake up and was pretty and golden.  I was so preoccupied with eating it that I forgot to take a picture of it after it came out of the oven.

OMG!  It was so good.  The crust was sheer perfection!  I don't normally like crust, and I'm really bad at making it too.  This was an eye-opener. It was buttery and flaky and had a slight tang from the yogurt and vinegar.  It rolled out easily and didn't break.  The filling was great too.  I packaged the leftovers up into tupperware containers for lunch and got a total of seven servings from it.  (The original recipe suggests it makes four servings, which seems huge.)  I will definitely make the crust again and try putting it on other things, like chile or a bottomless fruit pie.  Heck, I might even try making a chicken pot pie.


1 comment:

  1. If you haven't purchased the Smitten Kitchen cookbook, you MUST Do that Missy!! :) It is amazing. And much of it is vegetarian, but all of it is alterable to your tastes. LOVE IT!

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