Richard Corrigan visits the Food and Drink kitchen to serve up chicken and ham pie with crayfish using an interesting combination of ingredients.

Richard’s dramatic looking pie is garnished with a few of the crayfish heads that also serves to let steam escape from the pie.

To make his pie Richard used: A ham hock, 4 chicken thighs, 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 sticks celery, small bunch thyme, small bunch parsley stalks, 2 bay leaves, 12 cooked crayfish, drizzle olive oil, 2 tbsp tomato purée, small bunch tarragon, 50g unsalted butter, 2 tbsp plain flour, small bunch chives, 300g shop-bought all-butter puff pastry and 1 free-range egg.

To prepare the pie, put the ham hock, chicken, onion, carrot and celery in a pot and cover with water. Tie together the thyme, parsley stalks and bay leaves with kitchen string and add to the pot.

Bring to the boil and then simmer for around 1½ hours, or until the meat is cooked through.

Remove the meat and then strain and reserve the cooking liquid. Shred the meat into bite-sized pieces and set aside.
Peel the crayfish and set aside. Put the shells into a hot pan to brown with a drizzle of olive oil. Add the tomato purée and cook for one minute.

Measure 1 litre of the meat cooking liquid and add to the pan, along with a few leaves of fresh tarragon. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes before passing through a sieve.

Make a roux by melting the butter and whisking in the flour. Gradually add the stock, whisking to prevent lumps from forming.

Next, layer the ham, chicken and crayfish in a pie dish and pour over the sauce and scatter over the chopped chives. Reserve a few crayfish heads.

Roll out the pastry to a 5mm thickness and cover the pie dish with it. Trim the edges and press them firmly into the rim of the dish.

Brush with beaten egg yolk and sprinkle over some fresh thyme leaves. Make a couple of incisions into the pastry and insert the reserved crayfish heads to let the steam escape from inside the pie.

Bake in a preheated oven at 190C for around 30 minutes until the pastry is puffed up and golden-brown.