Chicken & Vegetable Pie

I have just returned from my break, and I am slowly getting round to my regular routine again. That includes posting regularly on this blog, although again, I am doing a slow-rolling start instead of jumping straight into cooking demonstrations that are de riguer here. One of the things I managed to stash prior to going for my break are the Chicken & Vegetable Pies shown above.

Aside from Fish & Chips, pastry pies of various sorts are deeply ingrained in British cuisine, offering warm comfort from the colder parts of the year. It's somewhat surprising though that the Sainsbury's Basics range only offers Chicken & Vegetable pie. The other pies in the range are usually potato-topped, or pork pies, which are slightly different from the pies that people outside of the UK are used to. Beef is not that expensive in this country, and in fact, there is a Sainsbury's Basics Cottage Pie, so I fail to see why there isn't a beef-based pastry pie available.

As I was feeling particularly hungry, I decided to pop two pies into the oven. Given also that I have spent two weeks eating outside of the UK, the pies were a gentle reintroduction to the food I'm used to over here.

While the pies had real chicken (making up 9% of the total pie, according to the ingredients), and had chicken stock to flavour the filling, the pie still tasted bland overall. The pastry was pretty good though, being crispy though not too greasy. The pie would probably be best accompanied by richly flavoured mashed potato, say with cheese or mustard, to make up for the blandness of the pie.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Chicken & Vegetable Pie (frozen)	£1.00	4 x 121g	+£1.00 for 4 x 150g	Higher chicken content. Recommended.

Chunky Cottage Pie

As far as I can tell, pies feature quite heavily in British cuisine. In fact, if memory serves, the first meal I ever had from college catering at my dormitory was cottage pie. These were relatively cheap, simple affairs: beef mince (or lamb mince if you wanted shepherd's pie) was cooked with some seasoning and root vegetables if the caterer was feeling generous, before this was used to line a baking tray with gravy, with the whole thing topped with mashed potato. While the concept of not using pastry to make a pie may take some getting used to, many of my British colleagues are fond of a good cottage pie, and it definitely serves as effective comfort food during the harshest of winters. Apparently, this post is being written in the middle of a British Pie Week.

I had quite a substantial amount of beef stew left over from the previous post, and hit upon the idea of pairing it with mashed potato for a quick dinner. Funnily enough, Wikipedia says that cottage and shepherd's pies came about as a means of making use of leftover roast meat by topping it with a mashed potato crust.

The Basics mashed potato mix is found to have a higher potato content than its regular counterpart (98% vs 86%). In fact, its contents are just dehydrated potato flakes, and little else, which would benefit those who are looking for fewer additives in their food. Care must be made in preparing however; if too much water is added you may end up getting what looks like wallpaper paste. If this happens, just add more potato flakes until the desired consistency is obtained.
Preparation is trivial and will only be expressed in photos.

It might be a good idea to season your mashed potato during preparation. Pepper and salt might be one idea. Where I work, from time to time the canteen serves mashed potato containing wholegrain mustard, which I find to be a good idea.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Mashed Potato Mix	£0.34	250g	+£0.53 for 432g	More comprehensive mix, no need for milk