You Will Need:

Main Dish

1 large free range chicken
1 T (15 ml) Ina Paarman’s Chicken Spice
2 x 25 g Ina Paarman’s Liquid Chicken Stock
2 cups (500 ml) hot water
1 large onion, cut into ⅛’s
½ cup (125 ml) dry white wine
2 bay leaves
4 whole cloves
10 black peppercorns
2 T (30 ml) sago, vermicili or instant noodles
1 T (15 ml) butter
1 egg yolk (reserve the white)
juice of ½ lemon
2 hard-boiled eggs, diced
1 t (5 ml) Ina Paarman’s Seasoned Sea Salt
100 g - 125 g cooked ham, cut into ribbons (optional)
Sour Cream or bought All Butter Pastry

Ina’s Tip

Support the pastry by pushing ½ an onion studded with 5 cloves into the middle of the chicken filling before covering the pie with pastry. This helps prevent the pastry from sagging in the middle. Decorate with a chicken cut out of leftover pastry. The chicken is drawn to scale:

Method:

Season the chicken generously inside and outside with Chicken Spice. Place in a heavy bottomed saucepan with the Chicken Stock dissolved in the hot water. Add onion, wine, bay leaves, cloves and peppercorns. Simmer for 1½ hours. When chicken is tender, remove from the stock. Remove the skin and bones and shred the meat. Return the bones to the stock in the pot, add another 1 - 1½ cups of water and boil for 10 minutes. Strain the stock and add sago.

Return the stock to the stove and simmer gently for 10 minutes to cook the sago.

Add the butter. Beat the egg yolk and lemon juice with ½ cup of the hot stock and add to the sauce. Bring nearly to the boil. Do not boil, as the egg will curdle.

Add the diced hard-boiled eggs, seasoned with Seasoned Sea Salt, ham and shredded chicken to the sauce. Spoon the mixture into one large or 2 smaller pie dishes. Allow to cool.

Adjust oven rack to one notch below the middle position. Preheat oven to 200 °C.

When the chicken mixture is cold, top with pastry, glaze with the leftover egg white beaten with a pinch of both salt and sugar and bake for about 35 - 40 minutes until nicely browned.