Practice really does make perfect.

Those of you who have read my blog regularly for a while will know the ongoing battle I have had with my pastry skills. No one ever showed me how to do it and as a novice pastry maker my first tries were very poor and often I would have (in the past) resorted to shop bought. But I persevered and improved, listened to advice, read cookery books carefully, storing away little tricks and tidbits of information and got better.

Well it just goes to show that if you keep trying with cooking and experimenting you really do improve.

This morning I made this chicken and ham pie and I am very, very happy with the results, the pastry looks good and golden, tastes great and there are no soggy bottoms! Mary Berry would be proud.

I didn't follow a recipe, just made it up as I went along. I roasted a chicken a few days ago so I had plenty of chicken picked off in the fridge, I had slices of ham from my Christmas gammon in the freezer so I thawed out a couple of slices too, made the pastry and shoved it in the fridge, fried an onion, added the cooked chicken, sliced up gammon and some mixed veg from a bag in the freezer. Made a white sauce to bind it all, some sage that I had hanging about and seasoned, that was the filling done, after that I just rolled out the pastry base to fill the pie dish, added the filling and put on a lid, cutting out a couple of leaves with a knife from the excess pastry. 30 minutes in the oven and it is one delicious pie.

This will probably do me 3 or 4 more meals.

I am so glad that I kept on trying because I really feel that I know what I am doing now and will never have to resort to bought pastry again. It is so easy to give up after a few failures.