Biscuits

Yes, it's a recipe again.
No, I didn't come up with it myself.

After finding my own perfect (well, close enough) chicken pot pie recipe, I found the best biscuit recipe to match it. I've tried sooo many biscuits and they never turn out the way I remember them from the United States. But these were pretty close....
For all you non-Americans: biscuits are little bread rolls that are very fluffy and flaky (if you bake them right). They make a great side dish to any oven casserole dish you can think of, and soups as well.

On Allrecipes you can find basically any recipe you want. And, the coolest thing of all: you can have it in Metric or US measurements. No more converting, yeah!!!
OK, big time copy/paste action following (of course in Metric measurements, I am still European):

INGREDIENTS
250 g all-purpose flour
15 g baking powder
6 g salt
10 g white sugar
70 g shortening
235 ml milk

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually stir in milk until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.

Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead 15 to 20 times. Pat or roll dough out to 1 inch thick. Cut biscuits with a large cutter or juice glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used. Brush off the excess flour, and place biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake for 13 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges begin to brown.

Chicken pot pie

Yes! I've done it!!! I've created my very own recipe for chicken pot pie!!
When I lived with my first American host family Schwan's chicken casserole soon became one of my dishes. And when I moved to Those Crazy Jarboes, TheeGeneral's chicken pot pie soon took its place.
Since I've been back in the Netherlands, I've had these occasional cravings for this wonderful dish. But unsweetened pie crusts are not available here, unfortunately. So about 6 months ago I started to browse the internet for chicken pot pie recipes. And, using some of my own Dutch common sense, I came up with a good alternative for a pie crust: ready made deep frozen puff pastry dough (bladerdeeg). It tastes really good.
Want the recipe for the casserole? Here it is!

Dutchnic's chicken pot pie (serves 4)

You will need (these amounts are all relative and depend of what I have in my pantry and freezer):
- 500 gr. chicken breast
- about 2 cups of frozen peas
- 2 big carrots, sliced
- an onion, cut up
- 4 potatoes, peeled and diced
- 2 herb bouillon tablets (but you can also use l. chicken bouillon)
- some dried sage (about 2 tablespoons)
- 50 gr. flour
- 50 gr. margarine
- dried garlic, salt and pepper and of course
- 4 slices of frozen pastry dough, taken out of the freezer

Start by dicing the chicken breast and seasoning it with some dried garlic, salt and pepper. Using a few table spoons of olive oil, fry it in a skillet until brown. Keep stirring and make sure it browns evenly. Add the onions and stir until those are nice and soft. Add the bouillon tablets, a liter of water, the frozen peas, carrots, potatoes and sage. Let simmer for a while (about half an hour or so) until all the flavors mix up nicely.

In the mean time, grease an oven dish. I always grease the outside edges too because that's where the dough will go.
When the 30 minutes are over, strain the chicken soup but make sure you keep the bouillon. So don't pour it down the sink!

Put the vegetable/meat mix in the oven dish. Melt the margarine in a small pan, adding the flour as soon as the margarine is melted. Stir until brown, then add 1/2 l. of the chicken bouillon and keep stirring until you have a nice thick sauce/gravy. Pour the gravy over the vegetable/meat mix and cover the oven dish with the pastry slices. I usually seal the slices together, rubbing over them with a wet finger and cutting it until it has the shape of the oven dish. Using a fork, make a few holes in the crust so the hot steam has a way out.
Bake in a 200 C (about 400 F) oven for about 20 minutes, until golden brown. Enjoy!

PS: No, don't worry, I haven't eaten my chickens. But since this is a chicken recipe, I thought they'd make a good illustration..