Curried Mushroom Pot Pie
A cozy, warming, filling recipe for one!
Curried Mushroom Pot Pie
Time: 1 hour | Difficulty: 2/5 | Yield: 1 serving
This recipe for mushroom pot pie leads to the definition of coziness in a bowl. It’s perfect for lunch or dinner, when it’s gray and chilly outside and you have a bunch of random vegetables to use up! In addition to the mushrooms, I recommend some sort of onion or allium, potatoes, something green, and another root veg like carrots or parsnips. I used half and half here instead of heavy cream, but if you want to use heavy cream and stock instead, you can try 1/2 a cup of cream with 1/4 cup of vegetable or chicken stock. Another tip: I used a milk wash here on the puff pastry, because when I’m cooking something small for one, cracking an entire egg just for a tiny egg wash feels wasteful. But if you want a shinier result, wash with egg and a touch of water before baking! And lastly, I made this in my oven-safe mini pumpkin cocotte, which can’t go on an open flame on the stove, so I used both a stove-safe pan and the oven-safe pot. But if you want to minimize your pan usage, make the whole thing in an cast iron skillet!
Ingredients:
Two big handfuls of mushrooms (I recommend meatier ones like creminis and oyster mushrooms)
Other vegetables: I recommend 1/2 an onion, a small leek, a couple small carrots, and a small potato
1.5 tablespoons of flour
3/4 cups of half and half (or 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 cup of stock)
Herbes de Provence
Curry powder
1/3 of a sheet of puff pastry (the frozen ones usually come folded into thirds—just cut off one third, so you don’t have to thaw the whole sheet!)
Butter
An egg, or milk, for the pastry wash
Method:
Chop the cremini mushrooms into quarters or sixths, and rip the oyster mushrooms apart. Chop the other vegetables into hefty pieces.
In a pan, heat about a tablespoon of butter with a touch of olive oil, and add the mushrooms. Sauté until the mushrooms have browned and shrunken down. Add salt, pepper, and herbes de Provence at the end. Set aside when cooked.
Pre-heat the oven to 425°.
In the same pan, heat some more butter, and add in the rest of the vegetables. Sauté them down for a few minutes, until the potatoes are soft and the onions are translucent, and add salt, pepper, herbes de Provence, and curry powder.
Add the flour to the pan, and toast it all together on low heat for about a minute.
Add the half and half, and stir it all to combine. Let it simmer for a couple minutes until the mixture has thickened nicely and coats the back of a spoon. Taste, and add more salt and pepper as needed.
Transfer the cream mixture and the mushrooms to an oven-safe pot. Cover the whole thing with the puff pastry sheet, and tuck in the edges. Score the top in any pattern you like (I like to do five or six parallel lines).
Brush the top with some milk.
Bake for about 15 minutes, until the puff pastry is golden and fluffy!
