Recipe: Pinaupong Manok Chicken Pie (Sitting Chicken Pie) with Blueberries and Cherries.

After the soup, all plates collected - from the left, of course as service is on the right; we proceed with the next course of Sitting Chicken Pie.  This is actually a reinvention of the Pinaupong Manok which is the traditional Roasted Chicken of the Philippines as made by methods available to the common folk considering that ovens in the nineteenth century were rare because of its immensity and exorbitant price that only the rich could afford them in their house.  I mean, think about building one as large as half of a bedroom considering Magic Chef was not around.  Get what I mean?  Anyway to get a better grasp of what is  Pinaupong Manok, I refer you to my published entry dated November 22, 2013.

Suffice it so say that Pinaupong Manok is essentially a chicken roasted with garlic, lemon grass, ginger, and salt and pepper in an earthen ware big enough to accommodate its size and cooked using fire from the stove.  In this dish, I decided to use the resulting meat as filling in a home made personal sized pie with a flaky crust.  The meat is flavorful and tender due to the initial Dutch cooking process with its steaming/roasting method as the spices carefully lace the meats while the heat slowly penetrates the bone to tenderize well.  The only modification is that since I am planning to use the meat as filling for a pie, I want them tender but moister than the original roast and therefore, the heat is gentler with the juices of the roast being saved after it has made contact with the banana leaves covering the bird.  As a an added flavor contrast to the chicken and the pastry, dried blueberries and cherries are mixed with the filling prior to making the pies.

Sitting Chicken Pie with Cherries and Blueberries (Pinaupong Manok Pie)
Step One: Roast the Chicken

Ingredients

• 1 medium chicken
• 1 stalk lemon grass, mashed at the root and folded
• 1 thumb sized ginger, peeled and mashed flat
• 1 whole garlic,  peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup dried blueberries
• 1/2 cup dried cherries
• salt and pepper to taste
• banana leaf

Procedure

1. Spread garlic, salt and pepper to the chicken to taste and let season in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, a day if possible.
2. Fill the chicken's cavity with the lemon grass, ginger and garlic.
3. Lining a Dutch Oven with banana leaves (no bed of salt this time), lay the chicken in the middle and cover further with leaves and the lid.  Bake for two hours in a 350 degree oven.  Once done, just leave in the oven to cool.  Therefore, in actuality, the cooking time is longer though the oven is turned off after two hours.
4. Debone the chicken, keeping or not, the skin.  The meats should be about 1cm. sq. sized.  Add the cherries and blueberries and mix well.

Step Two: Make the Pate Brisse

Basic Recipe calls for the following proportions (Memorize!): good for 14-16 pies or 2 double crust 8-inch pie.

• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 3 sticks unsalted butter (equals 1 1/2 cup butter)
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tablespoon sugar (optional but I love it for a sweet crust contrast)
• few tablespoons of ice cold water (approximately 1/8-1/6 cup)

Procedure

1. With the butter cold but soft (DO NOT MELT IN THE MICROWAVE OR PAN - the chunks of butter are important to make the pate brisse as it will make it flaky when baked.), cut the butter into pats of about 1 cm thick.  Place these butter pieces in a mound of flour with the sugar and salt.
2. Using your fingers, gently press the butter and flour together to incorporate.  One will notice that the chunks of butter are somewhat enveloped by the flour and not totally mixed with the flour particles. The dough will resemble somewhat pea sized pieces. This is good since during the baking process, the heat will slowly melt the butter away, leaving the spaces of crunchy flour and air giving the pastry's flaky texture.
3. In order to release the flour's gluten proteins making the dough resilient  for easier handling and thus building the pastry structure, slowly incorporate tablespoons of cold water with a gentle kneading motion.  You may add two to three tablespoons at a time initially then becoming a tablespoon at a time when it is finally a whole dough.
4. Divide the dough into six or eight pieces depending on the size of the personal pie desired.  For a whole chicken above, one may need to double the recipe.

Step Three: Assemble and bake.

• Place a piece of dough in the middle between sheets of parchment paper the size of a dessert plate and flatten initially by hand then a rolling pin to a rough circle.  Remove one of the parchment papers and using an ice cream scoop, place some filling in the center.  Grabbing the dough with filling by the parchment paper, fold in half and appose the edges starting from one side using your fingers touching the paper, pinch the dough together and as the pocket is formed, "force" the filling into the pocket.  Once the pie is fully formed, lay it on the side on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Bake in a 350 degree oven for twenty-five minutes.  On the final two minutes, brush the suface with a mixture of beaten egg and two tablespoons of water and broil using very high heat to a golden brown.

For the dinner, I served half as a pie while half as cuts of meat on the plate to provide the diner a different taste experience.  To this, I also served an accompanying sauce made of honey, calamansi juice (a.k.a. Philippine lime or calamondin) and light soy sauce infused with fresh peeled garlic.