Chilean Chicken Pie with Sweet Corn Crust

If you like to cook and don’t already have the Whole Foods Market Recipes app, I would download it RIGHT NOW! Not only does the app offer a seemingly endless supply of unique and healthy recipes, but it allows you to search based on ingredients you have on hand. I came upon this recipe for Chilean Chicken Pie while searching for a way to use up some leftover frozen corn. I followed the original recipe pretty closely, only substituting coconut milk for 2%, tomato sauce for paste, and fudging the corn crust a little bit. This was a little more labor intensive/time consuming than most recipes I make, but I enjoyed the process and – after eating it for dinner tonight – I would say it was definitely worth the effort.

First, cook up 1 pound of chicken and hard-boiled two eggs:

Next up, prepare the broth base for the pie.

cook garlic and onions until golden brown

add green onions, cinnamon, and cumin

once fragrant, add the tomato sauce and cook for 1 minute

add chicken broth and cook for 4-5 minutes until slightly thickened

Once completed, I mixed the onion/broth mixture with the chicken and some chopped cilantro and arranged at the bottom of a casserole dish:

Followed by a layer of hard-boiled eggs, raisins, and capers:

Next up – making the corn crust! The recipe said to put the frozen corn in a food processor and blend until almost smooth.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this step went exactly as it was supposed to. The corn seemed to be almost ‘too frozen’ and wasn’t breaking apart very well. Eventually, I just took the kernels out of the food processor and continued with the recipe by adding some milk and flour to the corn.

My suspicion is that this corn/milk/flour mixture would have been a little more doughy had the corn broken down more, but I added it to the skillet where it was supposed to thicken nonetheless.

Am I imagining this, or is it maybe getting a little thicker?

Once the corn crust seemed sufficiently thick (ie, my patience grew thin), I added basil to the mixture, poured it into the casserole dish, and cooked at 375 for thirty minutes.

ta-dah!!!

And for dinner…all spruced up with chopped green onions, brown rice, and carrots:

Full recipe as I made it:
Preheat oven to 375

Ingredients
~ 2.5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 white onion
3 green onions
1 teaspoon cumin
.5 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup chicken, diced and cooked
.25 cup cilantro
2 cups frozen corn
1 cup coconut milk
.25 cup golden raisins
2 tablespoons capers
2 tablespoons basil
2 hard-boiled eggs

Method
Cook chicken on stovetop and boil eggs in water for 10 minutes.

Cook onions and garlic in skillet until golden brown, add cumin, cinnamon, and chopped green onions. Once fragrant, add tomato sauce and mix. Cook for one minute longer, then add chicken broth and cook for 4-5 minutes until slightly thickened. Remove mixture from heat, pour into separate bowl, mix with chicken and cilantro, and arrange at the bottom of a casserole pan.

Add a second layer to the casserole of raisins, hard-boiled eggs, and capers.

Puree swirl corn around in food processor. Pour into bowl and whisk in milk and flour. Transfer to skillet and cook fifteen minutes until thickened. Add in basil and then pour on top of casserole and cook for 30 minutes.