Conch Pot Pie Recipe

A Walker original recipe. This is an easy and delicious way to have conch. This recipe will make one deep-dish pie or two shallow-dish pies.

Ingredients:

4 cups conch, pressure cooked to tenderize, then diced (see step 1)

Reserved liquid from cooking conch

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup diced celery

1 cup diced carrot

1 cup diced potato

1 cup diced onion

1/2 stick butter

1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup half and half

1 10 oz. can cream of mushroom soup

Seasoned salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Hot sauce

2 or 4 unbaked pie crusts (depending on deep or shallow pan). You can use a ready-made crust, or see the pie crust recipe below.

Method:

1. Slice conch into 1/4 inch thick slices and cook with 1 cup water in a pressure cooker for 12 minutes. Save the liquid after cooking. Dice cooked conch.

2. Mix all ingredients in saucepan. Simmer over medium low until reduced to a thickened consistency.

3. Add salt, pepper, and hot sauce to taste.

4. Pour mixture into bottom pie crust(s).

5. Lightly moisten edge of bottom crusts(s) with water, cover with top crust(s), seal edges and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top of pie crust(s) to let steam escape.

6. Bake in preheated oven 45 to 60 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown. Cool 10 minutes before serving.

 

Pie Crust

Of course you can use a ready made crust - but this is the proper crust for a pot pie!. This will make enough crust for two double-crust pies:

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into slices about 1/4 inch thick

4 tablespoons shortening

1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

Method:

1. Place flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor and process until combined.

2. Add the butter and shortening and process until mixture has texture of a course meal (about 15 seconds).

3. Pour 1/4 cup ice water slowly through food processor feed tube while pulsing processor. Dough should just hold together when pinched. If not, continue adding ice water and pulsing until dough comes together. Dough should not be wet! Do not process more than 30 seconds!

4. Divide the dough into two equal pieces, wrap each piece in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. This step is important - it chills the butter and allows the gluten in the flour to relax. This is the key to a light flaky crust! Note: you can also freeze this dough and use it later.

5. When dough has chilled, take one piece for one pie, and divide the piece into two pieces - one for the bottom and one for the top. The piece for the bottom should be almost twice as large as the piece for the top because it has to be large enough to cover the sides of the pan and have a bit of overhang.

6. Roll dough on a floured surface. For bottom crust, disc should be large enough to fill bottom of pie pan and have slight overhang without stretching. This means the disc should be at least six or seven inches larger in diameter than the pie pan. If you stretch the dough to fill the pan, it will shrink back to its unstretched size. For top crust, disc should be just slightly larger than diameter of pie pan.