Asian Style Chicken & Corn Pies

It might sound a bit unusual but these pies are very tasty, IMHO. I have adapted the following recipe from Hot Food (Murdoch Books). You can use individual pie tins or muffin/cupcake pan – make sure you grease your tins/pans very well cooking these pies even though they are of a non-stick kind. I used muffin pan for mine and the recipe yielded 10 small pies.

Ingredients

400 grams skinless chicken thigh meat, cubed

2 slices root ginger, finely chopped

1 ½ cups corn kernels

100 grams button mushrooms, sliced

150 ml chicken stock (I used 1 teaspoon stock powder and 150 ml water)

1 -2  tbsp sweet soy sauce

1 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped

3 teaspoon corn flour mixed with a bit of water

A dash of black pepper

2 sheets short crust pastry

1 ½ sheets puff pastry

1 egg, beaten for glazing

A little bit of oil for frying

Heat oil in a wok and fry chicken until lightly brown, add ginger and fry a little bit further before adding corn and mushrooms. Fry until cooked through then add sweet soy sauce and stock. Taste and add salt if needed. Bring to the boil and add corn flour mixture. Stir well then add coriander leaves and pepper. Place the filling in a bowl, leave to cool and rest in the fridge for half an hour to an hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 195 degrees C.

Grease the pan well including the top edge. Cut short crust pasty into 10 rounds and line the holes of the pan - leave about ½ cm on the top edge. Fill the pastry base with cold chicken mixture and press it down. Cut puff pastry into 10 smaller rounds for lids (1 cm bigger than the top of the holes) and cover each pie (brush the edge of the overhang base with water before placing the lids on). Seal the edge with fork and brush with egg.

Bake for half an hour or until golden brown. Leave pies in the tins/pan for 5 minutes before lifting them off the pan. If you have greased the tins well, this process should not be difficult. I made a mistake before by not greasing the top of the pan and it was a nightmare!