Bread charlotte | Chicken pie à la Michel Roux Jr.

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Michel Roux Jr.'s recipe for bread charlotte, on which my recipe is based (starts at 13:50):    • Great British Food Revival   Bread  

**RECIPE, MAKES FOUR LARGE PERSONAL PIES**

2-3 big loaves of bread, ideally a little stale (Sorry I can't give you a more precise quantity than that, it really depends on the kind of bread, the dimensions of your bowls, etc. Buy extra just in case.)
1 lb (454g) butter to clarify (or buy clarified butter/ghee)
1 oz (28g) dried mushrooms (I used porcini)
1 lb (454g) boneless, skinless chicken dark meat (I bought 4 big thighs and deboned them myself)
1 lb (454g) carrots
2-3 shallots
1 cup (150g) frozen peas (not thawed)
2 cups (473mL) red wine (could replace with water or stock)
2-3 packets unflavored gelatin (each packet I’ve seen is 1/4 oz, 7g)
tomato paste (a tablespoon at most)
vinegar (I used balsamic)
herbs (I used fresh thyme and rosemary)
flour
salt
pepper

Put the butter in a saucepan over low(ish) heat and melt it. If using unsalted butter, add about 8g of salt (a heaped teaspoon of the Morton kosher I use), and make you do that early in the process so I can dissolve. Gently boil most of the water out of the butter (it took me 10 min) until the boiling changes into foaming. If you want a slightly toasty flavor (like ghee) let the milk solids brown a tiny bit (you’ll see them, like brown sand) before you take the pan off the heat. Pass this through a sieve lined with a paper towel, ideally into a microwave-safe bowl (you may need to warm it up as you’re working with it later, if it solidifies). Or just buy clarified butter/ghee.

Dump the mushrooms into a microwave-safe container and cover them with about 3 cups (710mL) of water. Bring that up to a simmer in the microwave (I just gave it 5 min) and let the mushrooms steep while you do other stuff.

Cut the chicken into small(ish) bite-size pieces, season with salt and pepper and toss with enough flour to coat (I did a small handful of flour). Pull all the pieces apart from each other so they don’t stick to each other. Heat a film of your clarified butter in a wide pan over medium heat and brown all the chicken pieces.

While the chicken is cooking, peel and mince the shallots. When the chicken is brown, stir in the shallots and let them cook for a couple minutes. Stir in a squeeze of tomato paste and let it cook for a minute. Before the fond at the bottom of the pan burns, deglaze with the mushroom steeping liquid (some people pass this through a coffee filter to get out any sand that was clinging to the mushrooms, but I don’t bother), and put in the rehydrated mushrooms themselves. Reduce the heat to a simmer.

Slice the carrots into thin(ish) rounds and stir them into the stew. Simmer for 30-45 minutes until the chicken and carrots are soft. Halfway through (when evaporation has made room in the pan), stir in the wine and powdered gelatin.

While the stew is stewing, cut the crusts off the bread, slice it thin and cut the slices into wide strips. Dip one side of each strip into the clarified butter and use the butter to stick the strips onto the sides of four oven-safe ceramic soup bowls. Get all four bowls lined with strips of bread, leaving no gaps. Get decorative in your strip configurations if you want. Make sure you leave yourself enough bread to top all of the bowls after the stew goes in.

When you’re ready to fill the bowls, stir in the frozen peas, some herbs, salt, pepper and vinegar to taste. The stew should be a little less thick than you’d normally want (because the bread is going to absorb liquid), so thin it out with a little more water or wine if it isn’t.

Fill the bowls with the stew. Top with more bread (buttered-side facing up), cover each with foil and put in a 400F/200C oven. Bake for half an hour, then take off the foil and bake for another half hour or until a little brown on top.

Let cool just until you can handle the bowl with your bare hands. Put a plate on top of the bowl, flip the whole assembly around, then lift the bowl off to reveal the pie.