Chicken & crayfish pies

Name: Chicken & crayfish pies
Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients: 1-2 tbsp tomato purée; 1 tbsp flour; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 4 tbsp white wine; a few sprigs of tarragon; salt and freshly ground white pepper; 24 crayfish tails; 4 shallots, roughly chopped; 1 egg, beaten to glaze; 350-400 g good-quality puff pastry, rolled out to 5 mm thick; ½ tbsp chopped tarragon leaves; 1 tbsp chopped parsley; a little cornflour (optional); 500 g boned and skinned chicken thighs, halved; good knob of butter; vegetable oil, for frying; 1 garlic clove, chopped; 300 ml hot fish stock (½ good-quality fish stock cube dissolved in that amount of hot water); 350 ml double cream; good pinch of saffron strands

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Fish etc.

By Mark Hix

Published 2004

About

Freshwater crayfish, or crawfish as they are known in Louisiana, can have very little flavour. However, using a rich creamy sauce nantua, made from their shells, gives this pie a real full shellfish flavour to go with the mellow taste of the chicken. You can replace the chicken thighs with breast, but I wouldn’t recommend it as they tend to dry out. If you can’t find any fresh crayfish, then use lobster or crawfish (rock lobster), or even some langoustines. Alternatively, you can buy precoo