Quick and Easy Vegetable (or Chicken!) Pot Pie

When I was making my favorite quiche recipe the other day, I decided to make a vegetarian version mostly because I had bits of vegetables that needed to be used up quickly.

So into a large skillet with a swish of olive oil I chopped and added: 1 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 1 medium onion, 1 red bell pepper, the florets of a small head of broccoli, and sautéed all of it until tender. I covered the skillet with a glass top to encourage the steaming the vegetables as they sautéed. I seasoned the vegetables with dried thyme, salt, and pepper.

When I finished sautéing the vegetables, it quickly became clear that I had too much for just my quiche. I also knew that I had two store bought pie crusts and would only need one for the base of the quiche. This left one to top the pot pies!

I finished my quiche and popped it into the oven, then used the remaining vegetables to fill each of the individual-sized oven-ready soup bowls.

For convenience sake, I wiped out the same skillet then melted 4 Tablespoons of butter into the pan, added 3 Tablespoons of flour and allowed the flour a few minutes to cook in the melted butter. Then I added about 1 1/2 - 2 cups of chicken stock**(see below) that I'd made the day before. I added another sprinkling of dried thyme, salt, and pepper. Using a whisk, I combined the flour, butter, and chicken stock until it was thickened. You can adjust amount of chicken stock until this delicious sauce reaches the consistency you want. Then pour the sauce over the vegetables in each soup bowl.

Roll out the pie crust and cut circles out of the dough to fit over the top of the soup bowl by 1/2 inch. Gently drape the dough over the top of each soup bowl and seal by gently pressing the dough into the sides of the bowl.

As you can see, I decorated the top of each pot pie with a 'leaf' that I cut out from the remaining dough.

Bake the pot pies at 375F for 30-40 minutes until the pot pie is bubbly and the dough is a golden brown.

The best part of this recipe is that it can be made at the same time as the quiche recipe. You can freeze the pot pies after you place the dough and before they are baked.

Enjoy!

** Quick and easy chicken stock - I had a carcass of roast chicken in the freezer, and more greens that needed to be used up, so I decided to make an easy chicken stock. Into a large stock pot I put the frozen chicken carcass, an onion cut in half, half a bulb of fennel and its green leafy stalk, a couple carrots cut into chunks, two celery stalks rough chopped including their leaves, a few stalks each of fresh thyme, rosemary, and sage. Salt, pepper, garlic cloves. Add water to fill the stock pot. Bring this to a boil, then lower the temperature, cover, and let simmer for two hours. Cool, drain, and then let the stock cool in the refrigerator and skim the fat off the top. This is a great way to use up vegetables and chicken carcasses.