Years ago, King Arthur emailed newsletters, and one had a recipe for Town Meeting Chicken Pie. It became a favorite of ours, but it makes copious use of butter in the filling and the biscuit topping, so I stopped making it. I tried one version a couple of years ago, but the problem was the biscuit topping. I decided to try again on Tuesday. The original recipe made a large pan, but I cut it in half and used a 9 x 9-inch ceramic baking dish. I made the white sauce using some avocado oil and 1% milk. For the topping, I pulled out the scone recipe that Bon Appetit published in a special issue on Scotland. These scones use just 1 Tbs. oil. So I made my adaptation, which is half barley, and put those biscuits on top of the hot filling. It worked very well, and the recipe is close to the original with much less saturated fat, so I will make it again whenever I have about 3 cups of leftover chicken.
I do have a question for the group. I used to use Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry when a recipe, like by Black Bean and Pumpkin Soup or this Chicken Pie, calls for it for flavoring. I used up the bottle, and all I could find at the liquor store in our small town was Taylor Cream Sherry. When I used it in my black bean soup last fall, I had to use double the amount, and I still did not think that the taste came through, but I attributed it to having used more of the black bean broth. However, I noticed the same thing with the Chicken Pie.: I used double the amount, but the flavor does not come through. It would seem that the Harvey's has more sustained flavor than the Taylor's. Has anyone else who is familiar with different kinds of sherry noted a difference?
