Cooking in the Kitchen with Annie

Like I said a couple of days ago, I have no great culinary gifts but once in a while I feel the big push to follow a recipe, to face off with myself on a creative food challenge, so to speak. Monday evening I took up that challenge. Here are a few things you should know about my cooking and baking skills before reading any further:

1. No matter how clear the recipe is, I get it wrong;

2. Even if I follow the recipe to the "T", I burn whatever I'm baking;

3. Cookies come out too crisp;

4. My children have no joyful holiday memories of seasonal baking.

So, Fall arrived. I had a new oven. The impulse to cook/bake took over and on Monday after work I made a chicken pot pie.

So - this is pretty unbelievable. My brother bakes. He even makes crust from scratch. My sister bakes, cooks, stews, slices and dices. I - well, I open boxes. So - imagine my surprise when I run across this recipe for CPP and not only am I intrigued by the seeming ease of the recipe, but I felt impelled to alter it.

Call me weird if you want but cooking my chicken in Italian dressing is not my idea of a good seasoning base for a pot pie. So, out went the dressing and in came salt/pepper/extra chicken bouillon, etc. I discovered that using pre-made crust from the deli was a snap and cream cheese in the sauce gives it a subtle flavor extra.

The whole prep process took me less than 30 minutes. I even altered the cooking time and temperature, an unheard of thing for me to do. The recipe said 375 for 30 minutes. The pastry box said 475 til brown. I set the oven for 450 and 20 minutes. The idea was to check the pie after 20 minutes to see how it was looking. Amazing results. So - what do you think?

I'm not at my home computer so don't have the recipe with me. Anyone who would like it, just drop me an email. I will cheerful send it.