However, at least in the food blogs I follow, I’ve seen an untapped segment in the market – there aren’t any recipes of Indianfied traditional American dishes! This sort of fusion food, along with stir frys, is the majority of what I cook – just simple dishes that you ate growing up mixed with an Indian sense of spices. They’re the best of both worlds:  quick, easy recipes that I know like the back of my hand adjusted so that Aditya won’t complain about “blandness” when we eat.

So, today I’ll share with you my recipe for Quick Indianfied Chicken Pot Pie. This is the dish that got amazed raves from Aditya’s parents when I served it to them. (I think that prior to my cooking it, they hadn’t realized I knew how to cook at all, so perhaps they were just glad I hadn’t accidentally poisoned them.) It’s a very simple, quick, filling dish, so even if you’re not much of a cook, you should be able to manage just fine. Besides the text below, I’ve loaded a bunch of images on my flickr site to show you how to do it step-by-step too.

A bit of a warning first – I’m the sort of cook who doesn’t typically follow recipes. I’ll look through cookbooks for inspiration, but that’s about it. Cooking Indianfied Chicken Pot Pie is no exception – I’ll lay out the basics for you, but I highly suggest that you experiment a bit to get the dish just as you like it. Luckily, it’s a simple enough recipe that it’s easy to change things up without creating something that tastes bad!

What you need:

1. A Casserole Dish - I use your basic 13×9 glass dish, but you can use whatever you have on hand, as long as it has sides of at least two inches or so. You can even go crazy and use a pie pan!
2. Chicken – I use chicken breasts because they’re a leaner meat, and thus healthier, but you can use whatever cuts you prefer. Three chicken breasts were enough meat for my dish, but you can vary this based on your preferences – I like my chicken pot pie to be reasonably chicken-y, but don’t want the chicken to overpower everything else. If Aditya were cooking the dish, he’d probably use five chicken breasts.
3. Frozen vegetables – Again, the amount and type of vegetables you use depend on what you like. This dish calls for frozen vegis ’cause they’re cheaper, just as healthy as fresh in the US, and way, way easier than cleaning and chopping fresh vegetables. In the casserole pictured I used about three cups of corn, peas, and carrots, but in the past I’ve used string beans, lima beans, okra, and capsicum (bell peppers), and, when I had the time, fresh chopped onions. I would not suggest using broccoli or cauliflower.
4. Cream of —– soup – These are the soups that come out of can looking all gelatin and nasty. I used two cans of cream of chicken soup and one can of cream of mushroom soup, and all were the “reduced fat versions”. Because that lets me believe that the cans actually contain something healthy. You can use only two cans if you prefer your pot pie less juicy, and as always, feel free to mix it up on the exact variety you use.
5. 2 cups of Bisquick, two eggs, and 1 cup of milk – This is for the top of the pot pie. I like my crust thick, but if you prefer it thinner, cut out some of the Bisquick & milk in equal proportions.
6. Indian Spices – These, of course, are what shift your basic chicken pot pie into an Indianfied chicken pot pie. Because the focus of this dish is on something quick & easy that you can put together without much trouble, I use the premixed spices that you can get at any South Asian grocery. Specifically, I used roughly one tablespoon each of the following spices: black pepper, garam masala, chicken masala, coriander/cumin, red chili powder, chopped garlic and “mystery” masala, and two tablespoons of turmeric. The “mystery” masala is a container of mixed spices whose label was accidentally wiped away – normally I’d use two tablespoons of chicken masala, but I ran out, so a tablespoon of the mystery masala was substituted in. Yeah, Indianfied Chicken Pot Pie is never the same from one time to the next – but it’s always good!

Cooking the dish, step-by-step

1. Pull out your chicken and throw it in a pot of water to cook by boiling. If the chicken is frozen, then it’ll take about 30 minutes to fully cook – you can check by cutting through the chicken to make sure the meat is white all the way through, rather than pink. Don’t worry – there’s other stuff to do while your chicken cooks.  Also don’t worry that the dish will taste bland because the chicken is boiled – it won’t.
2. While your chicken is cooking, mix the Bisquick, milk, and eggs together in a bowl until the mixture is creamy and has little to no lumps. Leave it in the bowl for now.
3. Open up your cans of cream of —– soup, and empty them into your casserole dish. Then dump your frozen vegis in there. You can also add your spices at this point, but I prefer to wait until the chicken is added.
4. Pause for a snack of hummus & carrots. Also preheat oven to 400ºF.
5. Take your chicken out of the pot (it’s been about 30 minutes, right?), wait for it to cool, then shred into small, 1-inch long pieces, placing pieces into the casserole dish.
6. Add spices! I like to add my spices last, so that I can better eyeball exactly how much I’ve put in compared to the mass of the rest of the ingredients. When finished, your casserole dish should be looking pretty colorful. Then mix it all together.
7. Smooth & even out the mixture in the casserole dish, then pour in the Bisquick mix for the crust, spreading it to all corners of the dish to fully cover the chicken mixture.
8. Place chicken pot pie in the preheated oven (see step 4) for 30 minutes or until the crust turns a nice golden brown.
9. Enjoy!

If you’re confused at any step, feel free to step over to my flickr site to see exactly how each step is done.