Winter root vegetable pot pie with spicy cress salad
In a winter when Angelenos have seen such sights as a snow plow working the streets of Malibu, it’s no surprise that there’s a revival of interest in warm, rich, delicious pot pie.
It’s what diners tuck into on any given chilly evening at the 2-month-old Rustic Canyon Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen in Santa Monica, just 10 blocks from the beach. “We keep making more of them and every night they sell out,” says general manager and co-owner Josh Loeb. “We figured people would love the burger ... but it’s the pot pie” -- a modern, crowd-pleasing root-vegetable pot pie -- that has been a surprise hit.
Each baked-to-order pie, filled with bechamel-coated parsnips, carrots, baby turnips, pearl onions, fingerling potatoes and a bit of baby Swiss chard, is aromatic with thyme and a pinch of nutmeg. The whole thing -- enough for two -- is blanketed with a flaky crust.
Chef Samir Mohajer uses a cream cheese dough for his crust, made with equal parts butter and cream cheese. Butter gives it a melt-in-the-mouth quality, and the cream cheese makes it even more tender and flavorful. It’s a rolled-in dough (like a puff pastry, it’s folded into thirds before it’s rolled), which results in a fluffy, layered crust. “I wouldn’t think of using any other type of crust with this pot pie,” Mohajer says.
The brilliant touch is a wild herb salad that sits atop the pot pie, a tangle of spicy cress that Mohajer picks up from the Coleman Family Farms stand at the Santa Monica farmers market. Also known as upland cress or winter cress, the small, notch-leafed greens are delicate but with a peppery bite, although not quite as pungent as watercress. They’re dressed simply with olive oil and lemon juice, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and lend a freshness and even a sophistication to the pot pie, a rustic dish suddenly made polished, surprisingly exciting even.
Like the version at Rustic Canyon, pot pies can be thoroughly modern -- and still profoundly satisfying. Update the familiar chicken pot pie with attention-getting ingredients such as chorizo and saffron, crown it with a biscuity cornmeal crust flecked with thyme, and you’ll have a sensational dish still utterly recognizable as chicken pot pie.
As modest as the dish might be, pot pie has appeared on many a high-end menu over the last decade. Thomas Keller’s forest mushroom pot pie is packed with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and served with matignon of root vegetables. Charlie Trotter has made a version filled with veal and mushrooms. One of Michael Mina’s signature dishes is lobster pot pie made with the meat from a whole lobster under a dome of pastry. And Rustic Canyon’s Loeb says his inspiration for putting a pot pie on the menu was at least partly from a Daniel Boulud recipe he had once come across.
What transforms pot pie into a luxury dish is an investment of some time (a great luxury, of course). A sumptuous duck pot pie with a crust that relies on duck fat doesn’t cut corners, and the result -- tender pieces of duck, turnips, carrots and kale in a delicious saucy stew -- is well worth the considerable effort. Approach making it the same way you might a cassoulet: You could do it all in one day or at a more leisurely pace over two. Roast the duck, render the duck fat (alternatively, you could buy duck fat) and make the stock the first day and then assemble the pie on the second. With duck stock in the sauce and a little duck fat in the roux, it’s something of a duck extravaganza. It’s great for a dinner party, brought to the table in a big casserole and served with a glass of Gigondas.
Perfect for a snowy day in Malibu, or when the temperature dips down into the mid-60s. Brrrrr!
Cream cheese dough
Cut the butter and cream cheese into small cubes. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour and salt on low. Add the butter and cream cheese a few cubes at a time until all are added. Mix until well combined, about 3 minutes.
On a well-floured surface (the dough can get sticky), roll the dough out evenly into a rectangular shape. Then fold the dough into thirds as if you were folding a letter. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to allow it to rest.
Roll the dough out evenly about one-fourth inch thick. Cut the dough so that it will fit over the desired casserole dishes, allowing a half-inch margin all the way around. Keep refrigerated until ready to assemble.
Root vegetables
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss the carrots, parsnips, turnips, garlic, potatoes and onions with the thyme, oil and salt and pepper to taste.
Spread the vegetables out on a sheet pan and roast in the oven until almost cooked through, about 40 minutes. Discard the thyme sprig and set the vegetables aside.
Rinse and dry the chard. In a large saute pan, melt the butter over medium-high heat, then add the shallots and chard. Lightly saute just until the color turns bright, about 30 seconds to a minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper and set aside.
Bechamel, spicy cress salad and assembly
Heat the oven to 375 degrees. In a 2-quart saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter and saute the onions with the thyme until the onions are translucent, about 8 to 10 minutes.
Add the flour and mix well with a whisk, stirring until the mixture incorporates and forms a pale roux, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the white wine and stir to blend.
Meanwhile, in a separate pot, carefully bring the milk to a boil. Carefully add the hot milk to the sauce and bring it to a boil to allow to thicken. Remove from the heat and season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the root vegetables, the chard and enough bechamel to coat the vegetables. Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary.
Fill the casserole dishes with the bechamel-coated vegetables. Place the cut dough over the casserole dishes and push the center of the dough down to touch the vegetables. Using your fingers or a fork, crimp the edges of the dough all the way around the casserole dish. Using a paring knife, cut a half-inch slit in the center of the dough.
In a small bowl, whisk the egg and use a pastry brush to brush egg wash over the dough thoroughly. Bake the pot pies for about 45 minutes, or until dough is golden brown.
Toss the spicy cress and shallots in a mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice and olive oil to cover the greens. Toss and season with sea salt. Serve the pot pie hot out of the oven with a bunch of spicy cress salad on top.
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