The best thing about Puerto Rican Chicken Pie is that it doesn't have much chicken in it. Instead, it starts with little slivers of bacon getting crisp, then a chopped onion and diced ham. Chicken is part of it, but it doesn't play the starring role. Tomato sauce, green olives, chopped prunes, vinegar, capers, sweet red chilies and the pork make up the bulk of the pie. This makes me think that chickens are a delicacy, somehow, a little yard bird that's tossed into the pot after the pantry has been raided. I normally avoid any and all things that have green pepper in them, but this pie is so rich that it needs the green pepper's grassy bitterness. Here it is in the early stage, before the tomato sauce, capers and chopped prunes go in.
The recipe is a patient one, the kind that requires an "A, B, C," and "D" collection of ingredients, but it's not difficult and the flavor - like a tangy gumbo in pastry - is unlike anything you've ever had. If you want the recipe, I'll send it to you.
Once all the ingredients, with the exception of the hard boiled eggs (I know! Is there anything that's NOT in there? No. There's not.), are simmering on the stove and you have a 30-minute breather, you use that breather to make your pie crust.
Pie crust gets a bad rap for being tricky, but it's not. There's a reason we say, "easy as pie," and the reason is that pie is easy. Luckily, my friend Nancy taught me an important trick - put the flour and salt in a bowl and blend with a fork, put the shortening in the bowl and blend with a fork until it's like sand, and then - and here's the secret trick - once you add the iced water barely fluff it up, just enough so that it begins to clump together. Imagine being able to do that with laundry, pull it from the dryer, give it a toss and you're done. That's what you do with your dough. Don't bother with the cuisinart. Washing that thing takes five times as long as making pie dough with a fork and bowl.
And I know, it's the rolling of the dough that bogs the project down, but I have a trick for that, too. I learned this trick one beautiful July weekend on Vashon Island while staying with the family of a college roommate. After spending the afternoon picking cherries, the wasps so drunk on juice they bumped happily against us before diving in for another guzzle, my friend's mom made a cherry pie using bacon fat as her shortening. As if that wasn't tip enough for one afternoon, she then rolled her dough out between sheets of Saran Wrap, quickly, with no sticking, and keeping the counters clean. I've never been successful with Saran Wrap because it wrestles me and wins, so I use a kitchen trash bag.
Take the bag and slit the bottom so it's a tube. Throw a little flour in there. Then, loosely gather half of your dough and put it in a trash bag. Don't worry if it's in particles, because rolling will make it stick together. Make a little Ayer's Rock/Uluru with it, sprinkle some flour on top and start rolling.
Work the center first, then the edges. Every once in a while lift the bag from the dough, flip the whole thing over, lift the bag from the dough, and rotate so that you're sort of making a circle. It doesn't matter if the edges look rough, just pull dough off and fill the gaps and roll a little more.
Then, all you do is put your pan in there upside down and flip the whole thing over.
Take the other half of the dough and repeat the process. To move the dough to the top of the pie, just roll it around your rolling pin.
Do the usual folding and pinching, and poke a little design in the top. I made a pig, to be clever. Then, bake it. Forty minutes later, this comes out of the oven, and it is so good you'll think you have a parade in your mouth. Your only problem will be burning your tongue because you can't wait for it to cool.
And just look at that flaky crust. That crust makes this a breakfast dish, too, one that will make you think summer is almost here.
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