Chicken pot pie

Having roasted a couple of chickens last night for dinner, and only having eaten about half of the meat, and the weather being chilly, chicken pot pies were a natural on the menu for today.
We always have reduced chicken stock available (I make a big pot of stock, strain it, and then reduce it down until it is almost a jelly --- ten cups reduced to one cup, or so: then I freeze it in a saucepan, remove it, and cut it into one ounce chunks: whenever I need a cup of chicken stock I pull out a chunk and dissolve it in hot water: it makes making really great rice easy), so I simmered some carrots, and celery in stock for a while, added some frozen peas and corn, cubes of leftover chicken, added salt, pepper and about half a cup of heavy cream, and filled a pie.
I am so glad that I finally discovered how to make great pastry: for years this was something I'd try every few months, fail, and vow to try again someday.
Then I discovered cutting cold butter into small cubes (about 100 cubes from
a stick, which sounds a lot, but three slices along the length in each direction, then cutting into 10 or twelve pieces crosswise gives you that many) and for a savoury dough, replacing a quarter of the butter with lard, tossing it all with flour, and throwing it in the freezer for an hour before using a food processor to make the dough makes it easy.

6 oz cold butter, cut into small cubes
2 oz lard
2 cups all purpose flour
teaspoon or so of salt
1/3 cup of ice cold water

Toss the cubed butter and the lard with the sifted flour into the bowl of the food processor (with the blade in the bowl): put the whole lot in the freezer for an hour.
Pulse a few times, add most of the water, pulse again a few times, check if it is coming together, and if not, add a little more water. Pulse again.

Turn out onto plastic wrap, gather into two equal-ish piles, and press together to form two rounds of dough: wrap up in plastic wrap and press and shape into two rounds a few inches across, and less than half an inch thick. Refrigerate for half an hour or an hour or so.
Roll out into two circles to fit a nine inch pie plate. Etc.

It tasted good.

Yours, feeling flaky,
N.