So curry pies are all over London, and when I visited they were delicious - but in the Bay Area? Few and far between (though I do love me a Peasant Pie ). Solution? Make your own. These are delicious, savory, spicy, but most importantly, travel sized for your convenience. No seriously, you can bake these directly into those 2 cup glass storage containers (make sure they're oven safe) and then when they've cooled, pop on the lid and bring them to work. Nothing makes me happier than delicious food in a convenient form.
Servings
Makes 6 pies in 2 cup ramekins
Ingredients
2 pie crusts or flaky dough such as the kind used to make crescent rolls
2 lbs chicken breast, diced into ~1 cm cubes
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1 onion, finely diced
3 tbsp butter chicken masala*
6 tbsp cashew butter
2-3 medium russet potatoes, peeled and diced into 1 cm cubes
1.5 cups frozen peas
1 tbsp butter
Olive oil for frying
Salt, Pepper to taste
Equipment
Pan for cooking chicken
Pot for cooking potatoes/combining all filling ingredients
Oven safe ramekins/glass storage containers for baking pies
Directions
Preheat your oven to 375°F, and start boiling a pot of salted water for the potatoes. Once boiling add the potatoes, and cook until just softened, about 7 minutes (the potatoes should be hard enough to stir without falling apart or becoming more like mashed potatoes). Remove from the pot and set aside
Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. Add some olive oil to the pan on medium high and once hot, sauté the chicken until browned. Remove from burner and set aside.
Add the butter to the pot, and sauté the onions with a dash of salt until softened. Add the entire can of tomatoes, the butter chicken masala spice mix and bring to a simmer, then cook on medium low heat until some of the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes don't overpower the taste of the mix.
Add the cashew butter to the mix, one tbsp at a time, stirring to combine each time and only adding more if you desire it. Now add in the chicken, potatoes, and frozen peas. Stir, and remove from heat.
Line the ramekin bases with the pie crust, leaving at least 1 cm of overflow pie crust for each ramekin (try Serious Eats for good instructions on how to line the ramekins with pie crust)
Fill eat ramekin with the filling until the heap is about 1-2 cm above the top of the edge. Cover with pie crust, trim, crimp, and cut venting holes. Top with egg wash to get that golden color.
Arrange the ramekins on a pan, and bake at 375°F for 40 minutes or until the crusts are golden and crispy. Let cool about 5 minutes and serve!
*Secret's out, (almost) nobody mixes spices from scratch. Head to your local Indian grocer or check out the link to buy the spice mix for any plethora of your favorite Indian dishes. This particular mix includes coriander, red chilli, onion flakes, salt, green cardamom, black pepper, dry ginger, cassia, turmeric, cloves, garlic flakes, nutmeg, mace, star anise per the ingredients on the label. Who wants to mix all that from scratch and buy all costly spices? Not me.