Nicole’s Deconstructed Chicken Pot Pie Fingers for the Little Ones {Naptime Tales from the Trenches}



This is the latest installment of my Tales from the Trenches Series. An ongoing series where friends and readers share their stories and recipes about the great food they fit into family life. We all have tips and tricks to share with each other: when we cook, what we cook and how we cook the delicious food we love to eat. If you are interested in contributing a story and recipe please feel free to contact me. Today my friend Nicole is sharing her recipe for Chicken Pot Pie that she has deconstructed to help it appeal to her children. Not only is Nicole a home cook to boot – we regularly swap recipes and you will definitely see a few of hers in the cookbook – but she also runs a full-time business in New York City. She knows a thing or two about preparing food ahead of time, like in the morning before work or making dinners on the weekends and freezing them for the week. Just look at this Pot Pie recipe, it is perfect for children and adults and comes with freezing instructions!

I didn’t grow up in a casserole household.  I think my mother, having experienced her fair share of casseroles as a child (and, I assume, not positively), made a very conscious choice to steer clear of any dishes calling for canned cream of mushroom soup. So, it was more than three years into my marriage to my husband before I made my first foray the world of “one dish wonders” prompted by my husband’s request for chicken pot pie.

When the request came, one cold Sunday afternoon, I admit to feeling stumped. It seemed too easy.  But, as this was a pre-kids, lazy weekend afternoon, I had plenty of time to explore for recipes.  I poured over cookbooks, scanned the internet, and began experimenting that night.

Now, two kids and several iterations of pot pie later, I’ve finally devised a recipe that I can easily manipulate to fit the amount of time that I do – or don’t – have for making this dish.  I’ve made this recipe in several different formats – one large pan, to feed a crowd; individual pot pie dishes for my husband and I, (that can be decorated with small cookie cutter cut-outs from the puff pastry scrapes for holidays like Valentine’s Day, Easter time, Christmas), etc. But my newest version came in an attempt to make the dish more user-friendly for my kids.

The basics of the pot pie concept are great for kids, and its fairly easy to get them to eat – but I noticed recently that the individual pot pies were hard for my eldest daughter, Lila, (now four) to manipulate, because she had to wait a while after breaking the shell to let the food cool down to her temperature liking.  So the other night I tried a new experiment using Lila and her friend Will  as my official testers  – and it worked!

We made an inside-out pot pie – assembling the inside ingredients, then baking them on their own. Separately, we rolled out one strip of puff pastry and, using a pizza wheel, cut them into finger length strips, which we then baked for the last 10 minutes on their own.

Once everything was ready, the kids each got their own bowl of the pot pie mixture, properly cooled, and several puff pastry “fingers,” which they used to dip into the mixture and help them scoop.

Which just goes to show you…there’s no one way to make a one-dish wonder.