Chicken Pot Pie

I had grown fond of the small pot pies served at À la Mode in Granville Mar­ket — they occupy a lit­tle cor­ner in the mar­ket, and are per­haps a lit­tle hard to find. Some of the pies I’ve had are in lit­tle alu­minum tins, and oth­ers in large porce­lain mugs with a mar­velous swath of pas­try laid on top of them and warm fill­ing in the mug, usu­ally mush­rooms and gravy or onion soup. The alu­minum ones had tuna, crab, lamb, turkey, chicken and beef. But none of these pre­pared me for what I dis­cov­ered tonight.

It’s a Fri­day, the end of a long week, for both Pam and me. This morn­ing it snowed a bit, but by the time I was back the Island, it was clear, albeit still quite chilly, and the sun had not quite set yet. I was think­ing about a pie for din­ner, and noticed that they had some uncooked pies in a cooler on the side. The sign said to ask staff about them. I asked about chicken pot pie. The guy there told me he had to go and look to see if there were any left in the back. After sev­eral min­utes of wait­ing, the phone of the other woman who worked there rang. She asked me if I was the fel­low wait­ing to find out about the sta­tus of a large chicken pot pie and I said I was. Unfor­tu­nately, there were none of that kind left. I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed, but then a sec­ond later she said “Tell you what, come back in 10 min­utes. I’ll make you one.” I went about my other shop­ping, get­ting sta­ples for the week­end (par­tic­u­larly break­fast): lit­tle red pota­toes, onions, double-smoked bacon from the butcher, eggs and sliced bread. When I returned, the pie was ready, in a box, and wrapped up in a bag. I took it home and baked it in the oven for about an hour.

The results were sub­lime. A freshly-made, hot chicken pot pie straight from the oven is just about the best thing I can imag­ine on a cold Fri­day night. We pol­ished off half of it, along with some salad. Dessert was some raisin and pecan bread with cream cheese and Chamomile tea. Bliss.