Chicken Mushroom Pot Pies and TV Personalities

Bear with me as I ramble a little here, I've got a couple things related to this recipe to write about.  First, I am a huge lover of food television and would say that is primarily what our DVR gets used for, recording food shows.  Well, that and Nick Jr.  I really got into watching cooking shows a couple years ago when Camo was a baby, I mean, what else is there to do at three in the morning when you're feeding an infant?  More often than not I would watch Nigella Lawson because she is so engaging and you can tell that she really, really loves food.  I think it's really funny how she is always sneaking back to the kitchen at the end of episode to get a midnight snack of whatever she just made.  I've never understood the whole midnight snack thing, who wants a full stomach in the middle of the night?  And as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I do not love cold food.  BUT, it's amusing to watch someone else do it I guess.

Anyway, I was visiting nigella.com the other day and saw that there was a cook-along and what's more, the recipe for April was something that looked and sounded really tasty.  I know by the time you're reading this it's probably May, so it's kind of too late for you to join the cook-along.  Although from what I can tell, there really isn't any sort of link-up for this cook-along, it's just cooking a recipe and leaving a comment.  If the recipes continue to be delicious then I'll keep doing it every month, but a little earlier so you can join in.

Back to the actual recipe, which you can find here.  Nigella's recipe includes bacon, only makes two, and is written in "British" so I took out the bacon (I'm a little bacon-ed out, if you can imagine that), increased some of the ingredients and changed the wording so it's American-friendly and makes more servings.

 

The second thing I wanted to bring up is regarding quality of ingredients.  If you watch any Barefoot Contessa, you know that Ina is constantly saying to use "good" ingredients (good mayonnaise, good mustard, etc.) and that always struck me as a little obvious.  Who out there is buying not-good mayonnaise?  But for some ingredients, I have realized, this advice does apply and one of those is chicken stock.  I used to buy low-sodium, fat-free chicken stock because it's healthy (right?) and then I started reading the nutrition facts a little closer.

There are a couple brands of stock (Kitchen Basics is my very favorite) that are heads above the rest--they have the same amount of sodium as low-sodium broth, are naturally fat-free (as stock should be), they contain protein which indicates actual bones cooked to make the broth, the color is a deep caramel instead of pale yellow, and they don't contain MSG or yeast extracts to add flavor that should be there naturally.  As you might guess, these stocks are also more expensive, but for me the extra expense is worth it.  I make a lot of things from scratch, so this is one thing I'm okay with letting someone do for me, especially because there is homemade-quality stock out there.

Lastly, I've started seeing boneless "drums" in the store lately.  This seems like a great idea, who doesn't love chicken drumsticks?  Well, trust me to have made the mistake for you, don't buy boneless drums.  Chicken legs have about six hundred tendons in them and the only way to get them out is by cutting your piece of chicken into little shreds or using a pair of pliers.  No really, I read somewhere recently that using pliers to remove tendons is a great idea.  Somehow the tendons aren't annoying when eating the meat right off the bone, but they are annoying coming out of a pot pie.  Believe me on this one.

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What's your favorite short-cut ingredient?  What's your favorite cooking show?