food to glow

Vegetable pot pie gone a bit fancy with saffron, porcini mushrooms and an olive oil crust. This vegan, weekend family food recipe will remind you of pot pies of yore, but without the saturated fat.

Growing up in post-60s America, frozen meals – “TV dinners” – were de rigueur. And by meals, I do mean meals. Slim cardboard boxes held such delights as soft-but-not-in-a-good-way Salisbury steak, tomato sauce-streaked meatloaf, greasy fried chicken, bland macaroni and cheese; and even something called a “German dinner”. These would invariably come with a potato product (mash, tater tots, scalloped) and mixed vegetables (usually peas, carrots, corn), and even stewed fruit: all in a sectioned foil container ready to slam into the oven. Weirdly, hideous as they were, I have quite fond memories of these tin-clad meals.I recall once a week being allowed to delve into the snowy cavern of our freezer to choose what I wanted to eat. Rather than food itself, I think the “being allowed to” bit is what I am fond of. We didn’t just willy nilly help ourselves to what we wanted, whenever we wanted. We would all choose a meal, Mom – who would be delighted at her “day off” – would put them all in the oven, and we would eat our little meals together, synchronously peeling back the scalding foil lids. I guess I miss the good old days when delayed gratification and eating together was the norm.

Anyway, at the time, one of my favourites was a chicken pot pie. The tasteless (i.e. inoffensive) beige sauce held preternaturally perky vegetables and specks of dry, what I suppose was, chicken. It was topped with a pale shortcrust pastry that invariably somersaulted out of the foil if you got the fork angle wrong. I usually ended up wearing the scalding pastry rather than eating it. Andrew would say that not much has changed.

Over the years, once the craze for frozen dinners fell away, my Dad would treat us to his own homemade, family-sized vegetable pot pie. I can’t recall exactly what went in it, but I remember completely loving it because he had made it.

Recently I got a major hankering for this nostalgic American dish and set about making it my own way. I could have just topped it with a rolled out circle of bought shortcrust for that old-school vibe, but I wanted to lessen the saturated fat – and keep it mostly whole food and vegan.

Making a vegetable pot pie

The Crust I rarely make pastry dishes these days, but when I do I often turn to my olive oil crust recipe. On the day I shot today’s recipe not only was the light just awful, I had the misfortune of getting interrupted. A lot. The pastry was abandoned a couple of times during the making and photographing, so it wasn’t the best I’ve made. But, I promise, if you aren’t having to dash away multiple times during prep YOURS will be better than mine. 🙂

olive oil & saffron dough ingredients

To make this vegetable pot pie more quickly, of course use a quality bought shortcrust dough. You could also use puff pastry.

The pie filling is pretty flexible. I call it a luxury pie, but you can nix the porcini mushrooms – although I used inexpensive dried ones from Lidl – and saffron. That’s the only fancy stuff, really. My best advice for the vegetables is to cut the hard ones into small, evenly-cubed pieces. This step will help everything cook at about the same rate. Use a mix of fresh and frozen, depending on what’s in season and looking good.

The main seasoning I use is an American blend of spices called Old Bay. It is used in seafood recipes (particularly a New England crab boil), but is an all-round savory seasoning blend that’s been around for over 75 years. In the UK, use a poultry blend (no birds in it, just spices). Or, why not try this homemade Old Bay seasoning recipe from epicurious.com? If you buy or make it, use it as a general seasoning. Try it sprinkled on popcorn, kale crisps, dips, in bread recipes (especially breadsticks), in soup and in other sauces. It’s handy stuff. My spice cabinet is never without it.

Do you have nostalgia for a rubbish food from your childhood? Do you still occasionally eat it? Does it taste as good now? Have you attempted to rehabilitate it? 

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