dinnertime at homebase: chicken and fall veggies pot pie and proscuitto wrapped parmesan stuffed dates

hey all! lexi here, and the C-wigz is busy taking shots of tonight’s meal.
we have for you tonight–

chicken pot pie with fall veggies (including turnips, leeks, carrots, and shallots) and dates stuffed with parmesan wrapped in proscuitto. mmmmmmmm!

as i open this blog, we are sitting down to dinner, so first, the feast! and next, the review / tips / recipes.

regarding the dates:

i actually first tried this dish with my boyfriend jonah on one of our first “dates” at Cesar’s on Piedmont Ave. we tried a similar dish, dates wrapped in bacon, and i discovered that i liked dates, both the sweet food and the sweet activity.

so, since C and i have been getting excited about seasonal cooking, when i noted that dates are in season, i decided to pick up a pack and try it out. dates are way cheaper than i thought, we found a huge pack for $5 at Berkeley Bowl where we do most of our shopping. the proscuitto too, i once thought a splurge, but you can get a huge pack (1lb) at Berkeley Bowl for a totally reasonable price ($6ish). proscuitto is great for wrapping around things. i like it wrapped around asparagus with balsamic vinegar and parmesan dusted atop, and i love it with dates!

the actual recipe is easy:

take dates. cut a slit down the center to remove the pit, replace the pit with a comparable slice of cheese (i used parmesan, but just about any cheese would probably be as good). wrap in proscuitto (bacon would also do, but with bacon, you want the slices to be as thin as possible… proscuitto is already thin so it’s a no-brainer) about 2 layers, and stick a toothpick in it, if you have toothpicks. if not, balance the wrapped date so that the proscuitto doesn’t come undone. if your oven is preheated to around 400 degrees, just throw them in for 8-10 minutes. i actually just threw these in the hot oven after C had pulled out the pot pie– about 13 minutes, and the proscuitto had gotten lightly crispy, and the cheese had melted inside. i recommend just trying one to see if they’re done. (i’m a huge advocate of eating while cooking!)

On to the Chicken Pot Pie (and yes, the switching between users may get confusing but this is Cerrithwen aka C-Wigz Weezy Wiggles.) So, I woke up this morning in Santa Cruz to a foggy characteristic Fall day and my first thought was “I want to cook!” I mulled over my options for a while, but Chicken Pot Pie kept infiltrating my thoughts and I finally decided to give in to my craving. I used my handy Epicurious iPhone app to search for recipes and finally settled on Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie.

Once back in Oakland, I tackled my project with gusto! The recipe called for two fairly unfamiliar vegetables, at least as far as my cooking repertoire goes. Turnips and leeks, both of which are in season but I have somehow managed to ignore in lieu of the trendier sweet potato and cranberry type fiasco. Determined to expand my cooking lexicon, I happily started chopping veggies:

The recipe called for baking the pie in a Le Creuset type oval baking dish with an herbed pie crust on top, but I decided to modify things by using a deep dish pie pan and my traditional pie crust recipe. I know a lot of people are super intimidated by pie crust, but it’s actually quite easy and I’m going to share my personal pie crust recipe with you. The following is for one crust. Double the recipe if you’re making a pie with a top & bottom layer.

Cerrithwen’s Tried & True Pie Crust:

5 Tablespoons Chilled Butter
1 Cup of Unbleached Pastry Flour
1 teaspoon salt
~1/4 cup cold water

-Slice butter into 1 inch pieces. Add flour and combine in a cuisinart (if you have one.) If not, I prefer to use clean hands to work the butter and flour into the proper consistency. It should resemble very coursely ground flour… make sure there are no big chunks of butter. Adding the water is the tricky part. I’ve made pie crust so often that I instinctively know when enough water has been added, but it takes some time to get to this point. Start small by only adding about half of what is called for & then stir with a fork. The dough is ready when it clings together but is still discernibly flaky. Roll the dough into a ball and prepare a clean, well floured surface. Roll the dough until it’s reached the proper size for the pie pan you are using. The next step is to take your rolling pin and gently wrap about half of the dough around it. Put your pie pan underneath and quickly transfer the dough to the pan.

A chicken pot pie is a labor of love, and an intensive process with many steps. But at last she was done, and our dinner was complete:

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