Fuck You Thomas

In anticipation of a recent trip to Napa and an amazing opportunity to eat at the French Laundry, the day before we left I made a chicken pot pie from Thomas Keller's ad hoc cookbook. Also I had roasted two chickens and needed to do something with them before we left. Not that I have ever held back when tooting my own horn, but I can whip together a tasty chicken pot pie on my own fairly easily, it's really just leftovers, gravy, and some crust. But Cord is always giving me shtick about not sticking to a recipe so I thought that since the ad hoc cookbook hasn't let us down yet (try the fried chicken) I would follow the recipe exactly (sort-of). I even used Thomas's pie dough recipe. And yes, we are now on a first name basis. The dough came together nice enough and I tossed it in the freezer to cool while I worked on the pie guts. None of it was all that difficult until I got to the béchamel sauce. Fucking béchamel. It's not complicated, it just takes way to damn long, who's got 40 minutes to stir some sauce? Granted it tasted delicious, but I made it even better by adding my own leftover gravy which I made by pureeing the drippings with some of the shallots, garlic, potatoes, and garlic the chicken had cooked on top of. Bazinga! 

The most frustrating part was rolling out the dough. Thomas is a bit of a purist so his recipe is the simplest kind, calling for cold water as the binding agent of the flour and butter. But in my go-to recipe I use milk, which gives the dough a bit more grace for rolling out. I had flour all over my belly now that it gets in the way, maybe some low blood sugar levels, and probably some anger at my own inadequacy, which quickly led to cursing ol' Thomas Keller. 

Fuck. You. Thomas. 

Needless to say it wasn't pretty but I eventually got the job done. I put it all together and after baking the pie for an hour, I had pretty much used up a whole afternoon. 

In conclusion it was the best chicken pot pie that I have ever made. THE most delicious ever. And the best part about the whole thing was when we got to the French Laundry there was a card on our table. From THOMAS KELLER. I'm sure he writes them for all of his guests but I still took back all the nasty things that I said and all of the curses. 

I love you Thomas.