#67 - A couple of good pies for pie week
Leek, potato and ricotta galette + garlic butter chicken pie
Hello everyone!
This week is British Pie Week, and I figured you are probably saving your pie making for the weekend, so here are a couple of ideas for you if that is the case. Something about calling it Pie Week makes me feel like a Bake Off contestant, and so I have risen to the challenge of making some gorgeous recipes that hopefully would earn me a Hollywood Handshake.
There are many debates about what constitutes a pie, and for the sake of this newsletter, we are being pretty loose with it. It’s my newsletter, so I make the rules. In the US, they say a pie is anything in a pastry shell, so I’m going to go ahead and say that a galette is a pie (it also slightly encases the top around the edges, so there).
The recipe for the leek, potato and ricotta galette is available for free, and the one for the garlic butter chicken pie is for paid subscribers. If you are a fan of my work, then becoming a paid subscriber is a really lovely way of showing your support (for only £3.99 a month, or £40 a year).
Big love,
Sophie x
The Recipes
Leek, Potato and Ricotta Galette
Some people might take umbrage with me calling a galette a pie, but I am calling on my ancestors (fun fact - I am 1/8th American), as I think they would call a pastry dish like this a pie across the pond.
You make the pastry for this one, but it is unbelievably easy to do. You could even make it in a food processor by pulsing the ingredients together, if you wanted it to be even quicker.
It uses belles of the season (potatoes! leeks!), but jazzes them up with some hot honey and lemony ricotta. This one would be a great veggie dish for a weekend lunch spread.
Serves 6-8
for the pastry:
170g butter
325g plain flour
1 egg
for the filling:
450g baby potatoes
1 leek
1 tsp chilli flakes
250g ricotta
50g parmesan
3 tbsp honey
1 lemon
salt, pepper and olive oil
Start by making your pastry. Cut the butter into small cubes, and pop it in the fridge to keep cold.
Sift your flour into a bowl, then add 1 tsp salt and your cubed butter. Rub your butter into your flour with your fingertips, until the flour is all coated in the butter, leading it to resemble fine yellow breadcrumbs.
Add 6 tbsp cold water to the bowl and quickly bring it together with a cutlery knife. Briefly knead the dough with your hands to bring it together smoothly, then shape it into a disc, wrap it in cling film, and chill it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.
Boil your potatoes in salted water for 15-20 minutes, or until they are tender. Leave to steam dry.
Halve and finely chop your leeks, then give them a rinse. Melt your butter in a saute pan over a medium heat, and let it brown. Tip in ½ tsp chilli flakes and the leeks, along with a pinch of salt. Cook for 5 minutes until they have softened.
Add your ricotta to a bowl, grate in your parmesan, and whisk it until it is smooth. Add your leeks, 1 tbsp honey and ½ your lemon zest, then season to taste with salt. Slice your potatoes into 2mm thick pieces.
Remove your pastry from the fridge, and sandwich it between two large squares of parchment. Roll the surface with a rolling pin until the pastry is a disc about 3mm thick. Peel off the top surface of parchment, then place your pastry onto a large baking sheet.
Spread your ricotta into a circle in the centre of your pastry, leaving a 2 inch border the whole way round the edge. Arrange your potato slices in a tight spiral pattern on top of the ricotta, making sure they are really overlapping each other (they shrink when they cook).
Cut incisions in the pastry about 2 inches apart from each other around the border, in a cartoon sunray-esque way. Fold each of these strips inwards to create a pie crust, with each overlapping each other a little to encase the filling. This is your galette.
Place your galette in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.
Heat your oven to 200°C fan. Preheat a large baking sheet in there.
Beat your egg in a bowl, then brush it all over the pastry of your galette. Drizzle the potatoes with a little olive oil. Transfer your galette to the preheated baking sheet, then bake your galette in the centre of the oven for 35-40 minutes, until the crust is golden and the middle is bubbly.
Garlic Butter Chicken Pie
Who doesn’t love the flavours of a chicken kyiv? It is such a childhood nostalgia food, and led me to think about other ways you can eat chicken and garlic butter together. Seeing as it’s pie week, why the hell not smash the flavours together and put them in a pie?
I originally wanted this to be a wild garlic pie, but wild garlic hasn’t quite reared her head for the season yet (or at least I’ve not found any in my local area), but by all means if you find some, feel free to blanche it in hot water, chop it and stir this through the chicken mix too.
Serves 4