Abondance and Minestrone weekend

So I'm a little behind these days. Call it doldrums of the deep dark Republican winter. Actually I still haven't worked out exactly how George W. Bush qualifies as a Republican since he's got pretty much the whole reckless spending mentality the Republicans have always historically deplored.

But I digress.

It's about the cheese. Cheese can make us happy. Cheese could save the world. Especially Abondance.

Ah... Abondance -- that grassy, yummy, nutty stuff (top right) We had a bit of mimolette and the shards of Comte left over -- Comte, take me away!

We're not the only ones who are Comte fans.

Here's Hallgerthr, using her Jedi mind tricks on us.

These aren't the cheeses you're looking for.


Defending the cheese against the onslaught of the Rebel Alliance.

We will slay you with our kittie Rays of Cuteness. Then ALL THE ABONDANCE WILL BE OURS....HAHAHAHAHAHAH!


Or we will nap.

(Gratuitous paw picture -- because it's cute.)

In case you're wondering what breakfast is like in our house, here's the typical picture.

There's me, trying to log onto the computer. There's lovely soft French-style scrambled eggs, lovingly made for me by Eric. There's bacon -- no nitrates, free range, organic fed -- and there's Attack of the Fuzzy.

Hmmm.

Anyway, moving on.

Over the weekend, we made minestrone. Minestrone.

Now let me mention here that I'm not big on minestrone. Most of the ones I've had taste like lightly flavored dishwater and vegetables. Yeah, I'm not big on vegetables either. I suppose that's left over from the years in the great desert southwest where the freshest vegetables to be had were cactus pads. (Okay, yes, I know, nopalitos can be very tasty, but my point is, this is not my ideal in terms of leafy greens.)

This weekend though we made a Cuisine Minestrone -- and as is often the case with Cuisine recipes, it rocked.

Now, I guess I should add the disclaimer that we substantially changed the recipe. Why, you may inquire? Because I'm so reading impaired that even when handed a grocery list, I forget to get certain ingredients.

Anyway, it all worked out, so damn the torpedoes, I'm posting what we made.

Minestrone

1 cup cranberry beans (or kidney or cannellini)

2 Tbsps Olive oil
2 oz. diced pancetta or bacon

2 cups diced yellow onion
3 Tbsp. minced garlic

2 cups green beans, trimmed and cut to 1-inch pieces
1 cup celery diced
1 cup carrots sliced
1 cup fennel sliced
1 cup zucchini diced
1 cup russet potatoes peeled and diced

6 cups beef broth
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes (yes, I used canned because it's not the season for tomatoes)
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 cup orzo
1 2 oz. Parmesan rind
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried parsley

2 cups red Swiss chard, stalk removed and chopped
pinch of red pepper flakes


To rehydrate the cranberry beans, place them in a small pot with 1 tsp of salt and enough water to come 2 inches higher than the beans. Bring to a boil and then turn off heat. Allow it to sit for 30 minutes.

In a large pot, saute the pancetta or bacon in the olive oil over a medium heat til crisp. Add onions and garlic and cook 2 minutes.

Add each vegetable seaprately so they saute before adding next vegetable. Once all the veggies are in, let them steam for another 10 minutes in their own juices.

Add the broth tomatoes and red wine. Stir well and add the cranberry beans with their liquid. Add in the orzo, the Parmesan rind and herbs. Simmer over a medium heat for 1 to 1 1/2 hours over a medium heat until the beans are soft. Add another cup of broth if needed.

Add the Swiss chard and stir til wilted. Remove the Parmesan chunks and discard then serve.

So along with dinner we had some of this French merlot given to me by my boss for Christmas. It was actually quite yummy -- a vin de pays from Vaucluse, which is southern Rhone. The producer is Michel Arnaud of Domaine la Milliere, which makes a highly regarded Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

A glass of wine certainly helps take the edge off the State of our Union. Pour me another.

Food Snoot House Call

*Ding-dong*

"Food Snoot!"

So, Saturday was given over to what might be termed a Food Snoot Dinner. We took our travelling dog and pony show to Oakland to cook for a small host of friends. What we didn't mention was that our primary mission was to have our friend Jeff make his patented margaritas -- the best on this side of the Tropic of Cancer-- and to get a loaf of Bill's Portuguese Sweet Bread -- the best on this hemisphere of the world.

Our end of the bargain was providing some eats, to wit:

• Steak Poivre with Brandy Cream Sauce or
• Halibut and Shrimp Ajito
• Sofrito Collard Greens
• Ricotta Gnocchi, sauteed with Herbs
• Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes with Warm Black Cherry Sauce

In order to accomplish this, we went on a bit of a shopping trip, which took us to the chocolate department of Whole Foods. Scharffenberger, Valrhona, or El Rey.... choices choices. After a respectable amount of testing, we settled on 70% cacao Scharffenberger, and the spicy and very complex El Rey 62% cacao.

Molten lava, here we come.

We arrived early, the better to margarita ourselves.

"Work? What do you mean?"

"Cook. You were going to cook. You brought a giant cooler and a shopping bag of food along."


"Beg pardon?"

"See -- here are the pots and knives and other implements of cookage...."

"Believe me, we're so ready to cook, but my throat... it's just a wee bit dry...."

"Would you like some water?"

"When I want water, I'll drink water, when I want tequila, I'll beg Jeff for a margarita."
The Margarita Man -- a blur of action -- goes to work on limes and lemons straight off the tree from Bill and Mo's garden.

Meanwhile, we got to work on the menu. I forgot to bring the recipe for the gnocchi so already -- before I've even had a sip of alcohol, I'm doing well.

"Uh... I think let's start with a bowl."

In the end, we added two eggs to about two pounds of ricotta and then Jan and Mo lovingly rolled out the gnocchi with liberal amounts of flour.

After I'd had a good half a drink though, "Damn! I forgot to put in the Parmagiano!"

I think you can see where this cooking situation is headed.

Still, knowing this was a somewhat likely scenario, we pre-prepped extensively. So in no time at all, we had all the burners going pretty decently and, miraculously, had dinner moving right along.

For the Steak Poivre, we coated one side of New York Strip steaks with a mix of crushed peppercorns and mustard seeds and threw them onto the grill.

The brandy cream sauce is on the top left burner. A pretty straightforward mix of sauteed shallots, cooked with a tablespoon dijon mustard, a quarter cup of brandy and (the secret killer ingredient) half a cup of Straus Family cream.

Not shown in this picture: Jan and Mo and I taking turns dipping fingers in the neck of the cream bottle and licking off the thickened cream that rose to the top.

Anyway, we finished the sauce with lemon juice, thyme and some salt and cayenne. And once again, our own Sauce Master hit every note perfectly.

In addition to the Sweet bread, Bill brought us an Apple Pie, a specialty for Eric, who was not allowed to have Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes. Hey, Eric, you're not -- hey! hey! you're not allowed to have that! *Slaps hand*


For a cheese course, we had some Mimolette, affined by Jean d'Alos, of course, with toasted pecans.







Kitty says, "Nice bread, but where's all that steak that I saw around here before?"







Zuni Cafe's Ricotta Gnocchi

1 lb ricotta (Use Bellwether Farms Ricotta, or else, make your own and drain well. You need very firm ricotta cheese.)

1/4 cup grated Parmagiano Reggiano cheese
2 eggs
1 Tbs butter, melted
2 tsp flour, plus 1 cup for shaping
1 tsp salt

Mash together ricotta, 2 teaspoons of flour, Parmagiano, butter, eggs, and salt, mixing to a smooth paste. Chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

Pour remaining flour into a large plate. Put on a large pot of water to boil. Using a spoon, scoop out a small ball of the ricotta mixture. Roll it in flour to form an oval.

When all of mixture has been rolled and the water is boiling, drop the gnocchi into the boiling water and simmer five to six minutes, until puffy and cooked through. Serve hot with more butter and a sprinkle of fresh herbs. We sauteed them briefly in butter with some chopped sage.

Miss Muffett goes to Town

So I suppose it was inevitable that at some point, we would want to start making our own cheese. Fresh cheese, everyone tells us, is really easy -- no fuss and tastes great. Okay, then.

We're starting off nice and easy with homemade whole milk ricotta. I guess ricotta was once the "leftover" cheese, as in whatever whey was left over from the process of cheesemaking you could recook (thus the name ricotta) and dredge out the last milk proteins so as not to waste a bit of it. This sounds suspiciously like Milk Protein Concentrate, which is that stuff you find in Kraft. I'm not so keen on that. But whole milk ricotta sounds yummy.

So we bought a half gallon of milk and even traispsed off to San Francisco Brewcraft to purchase some citric acid powder. I subsequently found out you could make ricotta with vinegar instead, but hey, there's always time for that later.

I'll let you read Eric's account of our adventures at SF Brew -- which spurred on a whole other new obsession in the "make your own food" category. Between the cheese obsession, bake -your-own-bread, make-your-own-yogurt, and talk of laying down preserves in the spring to avoid the high fructose corn syrup we are fast becoming ready to move to Mendocino and start a commune.

Anyway. Before that though, we're making ricotta.

We poured a half gallon of cold milk into a little stockpot, added a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of citric acid. Then we dunked in our trusty Polder thermometer, set it for 185F and started heating the milk.

At first the milk looked only mildly curdled. A little bit of lumpiness formed on the top, but seemed more like skin than anything else. I stirred it gently as instructed (You don't want to break up the curds too much as they form apparently.)

As it got warmer I wasn't seeing much happen. "It's not working..." I whined. "It's not working."

I kept remembering all the stories I'd heard about everything that can go wrong with cheese.

Then, at around 170F suddenly, magic began to happen. "Curds, ahoy!"

Fast and furious, the process began to take shape, and suddenly, there was a really clear floater of cheese, real cheese, on top. About two inches thick, as promised. There was actual whey, or as I was thinking of it, "used cheese juice" separated from the coagulated cheese.

Marvelous!

We turned off the heat and covered it with a cloth to um.. let the curds rest. Let me tell you, it ain't easy to keep yourself from poking at the curds with unreasonable glee.

The kind of icky looking greenish whey that's left over, according to Richard Fankhauser's informative and totally addictive Cheese Page, is mainly water and riboflavin.


In the morning, we scooped (gently, gently!) the curds out of the liquid and placed them (gently, gently) in a strainer lined with --um -- a clean dishtowel. The ricotta drained quite quickly actually, and since we were planning to use this batch for ricotta gnocchi, we let it get pretty dry and grainy.

Not that this was something we had ever made before, but it sounded good.

Interestingly enough, on Saturday morning I went by the Cowgirl Creamery at the Ferry building, on a completely unrelated Mimolette mission. They happened to have some REAL ricotta, which had a lovely golden straw color and tasted (gently) like butter.

Not that ours is bad, you understand. But as with all things, it'sall about the ingredients. Okay, so for this first time, we started with store-bought milk (organic, but store-bought)

As an aside, I will also mention the utterly creamy and throroughly decadent miticrema, a Spanish sheep's milk cheese from the Murcia region that they're carrying at Cowgirl now.

Ah well, anyhow, ricotta today, Camembert tomorrow! Whee!!

Comte ROCKS! And so do Braised Short Ribs...

It's been rainy and stormy here. Very romantic looking. I happen to like the storminess -- particularly if I'm not stressed and don't have to be out schlepping things to and from in it.

We wanted to go out for a bit Saturday and so we went for a little expedition down at the Embarcadero. By the time we got there, the morning Farmer's Market had mostly cleared out, with only some bare puddles in the lot where the stalls had been set up in the morning.

Fortunately there's still lots to do down there, First there was a gelato snack at Ciao Bella (Okay, it's not Amorino, but then, what is?) Then there was some wandering by the chocolate and the mushrooms. A bit of drooling over the All Clad cookware at Sur la Table. And then the obligatory stop at Cowgirl Creamery, where our intention was to get a Mt. Tam and maybe some Straus Family butter. But then we just had to try the Comte affined by Jean d'Alos. "SOLD! to the woman with the happy look on her face!"

We also picked up a Black Gold goat cheese which is produced by the Mendocino Elk Creamery, a certified organic and biodynamic creamery that also raises orchids. It was certainly goaty, though to my mind a little too sharp and not as interesting as the Comte, no matter how much organic alfalfa and/or orchids the goats consume.

The Comte on the other hand was spectacular. It's only encouraging our obsession with French cheeses.

For dinner, we heated up a pot pie, a bit of Sopa de Ajo, poured a glass of wine and, ummm, removed a fuzzy from the chair.

"'Scuse me, Sarastro...'scuse me...um...pardon? Kitty?"



Yeah. Anyway. I don't think I ever put up a photo of the finished pot pie and how lovely it looks when the crust is brushed and nicely browned and ... get me a fork!


Anyhow, tonight, (or maybe I should say this afternoon, all afternoon) we made Braised Short Ribs. Talk about stick to your ribs... All of us are still licking our chops.



Beef Short Ribs

1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced carrot
1/4 cup diced celery
8 cloves minced garlic
1 bay leaf

1/4 cup AP flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne

2 Tbsp olive oil
2 lbs bone in short ribs (we had the butcher cut each rib in half)

1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 Tbsp reserved flour from dredging (above)

1 1/2 cups beef broth
3/4 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup madeira
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes (not oil packed)
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 cups crimini mushrooms, quartered
6 oz broccolini

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine the flour, salt, pepper and cayenne in a large plastic bag or a tupperware with a top. Put in the short ribs and shake to coat evenly. Reserve unused flour for later.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a sauteuse or dutch oven over a medium heat (not high). Put in the ribs with the bone side up and brown for 8 minutes. Then turn and brown 8 minutes more. remove the ribs from the pan and pour off the fat.

Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the same pan and saute onions, carrots, garlic, celery, bay leaf and tomato paste about 5 minutes. Add the reserved flour and stir until the vegetables are all coated.

Deglaze with beef broth, red wine and madeira. Stir in the sun dried tomatoes and Worcestershire sauce and bring it all to a simmer. Arrange the ribs in the sauce, bone side up, cover and braise in the oven for 2 hours.

After two hours in the oven add the mushrooms, and put it back in the oven for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes take the ribs out and put them on a plate and tent with foil. On the stovetop, bring the sauce to a simmer over medium heat and add the broccolini. Cook until tender -- about 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

For a really terrific meal though, serve the ribs over Gremolata Pasta. The lemon and garlic give a nice acidic bite that cuts through the umami of the ribs.

Gremolata Pasta

9 ounces dry pasta (fettucine, spaghetti, etc.)

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp minced garlic
zest of 1 lemon
salt and pepper

Cook the pasta according to directions, until al dente.

Combine all other ingredients in a medium bowl. Toss the cooked pasta with the dressing.

Oh so good. Yes indeedy.














For the cheese component of the meal, we had some Fromage d'Affinois -- a buttery, creamy, kinda decadent little triple creme that you can pretty much just smear onto your mouth.

As we were standing at the cheese counter at Whole Foods, I whined about wanting some Brie.

"But there's no Brie de Meaux," Eric pointed out, as if that were our only option from the entire Marne valley. (To read about the authentic bries, check out David Lebovitz's informative "To Brie or not to Brie.")

"I know that," I whined back. "but can't we get...get... fromage d'affinois?" I was trying to strike a balance between AOC and MPC.

We cajole a taste out of the cheese guy, and at last, guiltily escape with a wedge of the stuff half oozing out of the package. Ooozing. That's all I ask.

Mmmm...

After receiving the opportunity to lick the marrow up, the kitties no longer feel the need to dance in attendance upon us...

Can you tell?

""No, Hallgerthr, the camera does not steal your soul."

Perp Walk: The Sugar Seven

Just about every day, Eric and I remind ourselves how grateful we are to live in the Bay Area. We have access to the freshest produce on a daily basis. At work, I lunch every day at what is probably the world's first kosher, organic salad bar. We shop at places where "crunchy granola" does not mean Quaker Breakfast Bars. Still, when I read a recent New York Times article on the Diabetes Epidemic, it engendered a frisson of alarm that sent us scouring our cabinets.

Entitled "Bad Blood," it traces the rise of Type 2 diabetes in the poorest regions of NewYork City, where, not coincidentally, obesity is rampant.

Most parents know that kids get too much sugar. They might even be aware that things like soda and candy contain way too much of the stuff. After reading this series, though, I was reminded of the story of high fructose corn syrup.

I believe that it is a straight line from the rise of all-pervasive high fructose corn syrup -- which was developed in the 1970s -- to the rise of obesity in the last 30 years, to the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes in the last 20 years. (It can take 7-10 years for this form of diabetes to fully assert itself -- you can do the math.)

Now check out the ingredients on a Quaker Granola Bar -- count how many times the words "corn syrup" alone appear. Look on any Nature Valley product, go ahead.

So there we are, reading about all of the horrible effects of HFCS on your metabolism, and I wonder how much of the stuff we have around. I mean, we have access to what must be one of the healthiest lifestyles on the planet. We buy organic, free range, cage-free, line-caught. We make our own pot pies, our own soups, our own yogurt. Our bread ingredients say things like "sprouted organic wheat berries" and "organic flax seeds." We buy the impossibly expensive, impossibly good Straus Family ice cream, which has ingredients like "cream" and "vanilla" as opposed to "dextrose" and "guar gum." Yeah, we don't have stuff like Eggo Waf-fulls (what the hell is a waf-full anyhow?? Is it so called because it's aw-full?) or Miracle Whip around.... and yet...

Eric is diabetic, Type 1, which is so different from the so-called "adult-onset" as to be an entirely different disease. What is not different between the two types is the need to know what you're putting into your mouth and how it's going to affect your body. But heck, aren't we all supposed to know?


Still, our household is probably far more vigilant -- even, I dare say, more than the average diabetic household -- when it comes to the issue of sugars and carbohydrates. As we cracked open the cabinets and looked at the labels of just about everything we had, we were gratified and perhaps a little sheepish to find HFCS on the ingredient list of only the seven items pictured at the top.

Hey, you can try it at home yourself. Email me the crazy things you find in your pantry with corn syrup in them.

I'm not the only food proselytizer to track the ills of HFCS, by any means. Keep on top of the Accidental Hedonist, who is doing a great job of covering the issue.

Stocking up for the winter with Chicken Pot Pies

It ain't Swansons, believe me. And Sarastro gives it his kitty stamp of approval.

When we first made these pot pies, it took hours and we swore we'd never go through it again. Then we tasted them. Better than any pot pie you've ever had in your life.

"Aw, man. "

We knew we'd be making them again. And in fact once every winter, we break out the recipe, make a dozen of the little babies, wrap 'em in plastic, freeze ten and then bake and snarf up two of them. The recipe we do now has some shortcuts in it, so it's not exactly the way that Cuisine instructed. For instance, we don't make the white stock from scratch for the veloute sauce (we substitute store-bought chicken broth), and we no longer roast the whole chicken ourselves, we purchase an already roasted chicken from Whole Foods. So sue us.

Even so, leave yourself all afternoon free.

Chicken Pot Pies

I find it's best to split the prepping into five sections, and if you have help, I've indicated who should do which tasks, too)
-- Veloute sauce (Person 1) takes at least an hour to simmer
-- Dough (Person 2) needs to chill for a while
-- Veggie Prep (Person 1) will need 15 minutes of roasting time
-- Chicken shredding (Person 2)
-- Assembly (Person 1 & 2)

Veloute Sauce (4 cups)
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/2 cup diced carrot
- 1/2 cup diced celery
- 2 Tbsp. Shallots peeled and minced
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 6 cups quality chicken stock
- 4 sprigs fresh parsley
-2 bay leaves
- 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
- 6 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup AP flour
- Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in large saucepan and add the carrots, celery and shallots. Sweat the vegetables until they're soft (8 minutes or so) and then deglaze with the white wine and reduce until the liquid is almost gone (8-10 minutes).

Add the chicken stock herbs and peppercorns to the saucepan and simmer over a medium heat for 1 hour.

Meanwhile prepare a blond roux. Melt the 6 Tbsp. of butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Using a whisk slowly add in the 1/2 cup flour. Continue whisking until light brown. Remove it from the heat and set aside.

After simmering the stock for 1 hour, strain and return the liquid to a clean saucepan. Bring it to a simmer again and whisk in the roux.

Cook the veloute until it is velvety in texture and will coat the back of a spoon (2-3 minutes) simmer 8-10 more minutes and then season with salt and pepper.

Herbed Pastry Dough
This can be made very quickly in a food processor if you have one. I don't so I do it the old fashioned way with a pastry cutter. Even so, the dough doesn't take long and can be done while the veloute stock simmers.

- 4 cups AP flour
- 2 tsp minced fresh parsley
- 2 tsp minced fresh thyme
- 2tsp minced fresh rosemary
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed (2 sticks)
- 1/2 cup cold vegetable shortening, cubed
- 8-12 Tbsp. ice water

Combine the flour, herbs, salt and pepper in the food processor or a LARGE bowl.

Add the cold butter and shortening and incorporate into the flour, by pulsing 10-12 times in a food processor, or by cutting the cubes in with a pastry cutter or two crossed knives. When you're done the mixture should look like coarse cornmeal with a few small chunks of fats throughout. You don't have to get every chunk cut down.

Add in 6-8 Tbsp. of the ice water to the mixture and pulse or stir to make clumps form in the dough. Add in more water tablespoon by tablespoon if the mixture seems too dry, but BE CAREFUL. You don't want to add too much water or overmix it, or your dough will be sticky.

Transfer the dough to a large piece of plastic wrap. Flatten it into a big rectangle and wrap completely. Chill it in the refrigerator for at least 1/2 an hour while you do the rest of the prep.

Vegetable Filling
The original recipe notes also that you can substitute other root vegetables (though they advise avoiding beets because they'll color the pie pink) and we've had success with celery root and other squashes, though I didn't like turnips particularly. We also thought about subbing in rehydrated porcinis for the shiitakes, but totally forgot to do it.

-- 2 cups peeled butternut squash, cut into 1" cubes
-- 2 cups peeled parsnips, cut into 1" cubes
-- 2 cups small unpeeled red potatoes, quartered
-- 2 cups purple pearl onions, peeled
-- 8 oz. shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and cut up
-- 8 oz crimini mushrooms, stemmed and quartered

-- 1/4 cup olive oil
-- 2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

First, preheat the oven to 425 F.

Cutting up the vegetables will take the most time. When I'm feeling energetic, I start with blanching the pearl onions for 30 seconds in boiling water and then icing and peeling them -- just to get it out of the way. It's my least favorite part of the whole darned pot pie escapade.

Throw everything into a large bowl and then toss it with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Then spread it out on a large baking sheet (I line the baking sheet with a Silpat to keep sticking to a minimum.)

Roast the vegetables for 10 minutes or until they begin to brown. Stir them around a bit and roast for another 5 minutes.

Chicken Shredding
I think just using a nice roasted 5 - 7 pound chicken (we like a lot of chicken meat in our pot pies) from Whole Foods cuts down on the stress of prepping this recipe. This can be done by the person who finished the pastry dough.

-- 5-7 pound roasted chicken

Shred off all the meat and discard the skin (or feed it to your feline sous-chefs).




Break it into bite-sized pieces and toss it into the large bowl that contains or will contain the roasted vegetables.




Hallgerthr would like to remind you not to miss the underside of the chicken or the yummy little chicken "oysters" of meat on the back.

Assembly
This is the part where you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Keep that oven preheated to 425F.




Here's what you should have on hand:
-- 12 1-cup tartlet tins or pot pie dishes
-- the chilled pie dough (but keep it chilled until you're ready for the rolling out step)
-- 4 cups of veloute
-- the roasted vegetables and shredded chicken
-- 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
-- 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
-- 1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
-- 1/2 tsp salt
-- 1/2 tsp black pepper
-- 1 whole egg beaten with a tbsp of cold water

Combine the veloute, vegetables, chicken, vinegar, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper in that large bowl, making sure everything is nicely coated. Then spoon a cup of filling into each pie tin or dish, dividing the filling completely among the dishes. If two people are working on this, one person can be doing the combining while the other person rolls out the dough.

For the pastry, divide the dough rectangle into 12 equal pieces. While you work on each piece of pastry, keep the rest cold in the fridge.

Handling it as little as possible (dough is better when not too warmed, even by your hands!) form it into a ball, then flatten and roll it out into a circle to fit over the pot pie dish. It's better to roll it a little large (you can always tuck the ends under as you place it) rather than stretch it to fit, since the dough tends to shrink back if you stretch it.

Repeat for each piece of dough, rolling out and placing it. Crimp the edges, so it sticks to the dish or tin -- you can do it with fancy little decorative touches too, like cut out leaves, or forked edges.

At this point, you could wrap each one in a double layer of plastic wrap and freeze them -- which we did with ten of them. They make great little individual lunches and they'll last frozen for about a month.

When you're ready to eat though, pull one out -- you don't even have to thaw it -- put it on a baking sheet, brush the top with the beaten egg mixture, and bake for 30-35 minutes at 400F until the crust is golden. There is sometimes a bit of bubbling out of filling.

Do let them cool a few minutes before eating -- if you can stand the waiting.

And be sure to defend your prize.