We are on a tight budget nowadays. Basically, this means I am trying to empty the freezer of all goods before buying any new proteins. I tend to save everything. I really never toss extra food out. So what this means is there is a lot of random food in the freezer. This recipe came to be because I’ve had a half sheet of puff pastry in my freezer for a few months now. It’s been sitting there waiting to be made into a Salmon En Croute, but I don’t see myself spending the coin on fresh salmon for a few months so I needed to come up with something else.
I poked further into the freezer and saw a little over a half of pound of shrimp, along with random sausages and of course plenty of turkey, chicken, and seafood stock. So I went onto epicurious.com with an idea for a pot pie. I figured I could find something to do with shrimp or sausage. I got lucky and found this gem of a recipe for Shrimp and Andouille Pot Pies! Of course I did not have Andouille sausage so I subbed in some Linguica instead. To make this recipe work for us I halved it, used onion instead of leeks, added carrots, celery and most importantly used homemade seafood stock. Stock is another godsend of my frugal powers.
This can be made in advance! The puff pastry tops can be made the day before and stored in an air tight container. To prep the filling the day before follow all the steps up until you add the cream and shrimp. The day you serve reheat the filling on the stove top and then add the cream and cook the shrimp for a minute and the fill the ramekins up. Bake for 5 minutes and you have a stunning meal that will please your guests. This is also a great date night recipe. Something about the individual ramekins is romantic, with a bottle of wine and you are set.
Recipe makes two 1 ¼ cup pot pies. My ramekins are much smaller as you can see in the photo, I made four small servings. You could easily put all the filling into a large ramekin and make one puff pastry top and serve this family style.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1/4 cup cream
- 1 tbsp all purpose flour
- 2 tsp butter
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 celery rib, finely chopped
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, chopped
- 1/3 pound Linguica sausage (about one link), cut into scant 1/2-inch cubes
- 2 tbsp dry vermouth or dry white wine
- 1 cup seafood stock
- 1/4 teaspoon fresh thyme (dried works fine, I used fresh as we have some growing on our balcony)
- 1 small red-skinned potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- 3/4 pounds deveined peeled uncooked jumbo shrimp, cut into 1-inch pieces
Method
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll the puff pastry dough out and cut out two 5 ¼” rounds. The size of your rounds depends on the size of your ramekins. I used smaller ramekins so I needed to cut out four smaller rounds instead of two large. Place the rounds on the baking sheet. Brush them with the beaten egg and sprinkle them with kosher salt and pepper. Bake for 15 minutes until they are golden brown.
When you are ready to make the filling preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl whisk together cream and flour. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter and add onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. Cook until all vegetables are tender, which is about ten minutes.
Add the Linguica to the pan and cook for 4 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the vermouth; simmer until it evaporates. Add the seafood stock, thyme and potato. Cook till the potato is fork tender.
Note: Once the potato is tender you are basically done. You could remove it from the heat and place it in the refrigerator for the next day. Reheat the mixture before following the next steps.
If you continue on, add the cream to the skillet and stir. Simmer till the sauce thickens, about 3 minutes. Turn the heat off and add the shrimp, stir it around for a few minutes.
Then carefully transfer the hot filling into the ramekins. Place a puff pastry top on each pie and bake till the filling bubbles, about 5-8 minutes. Enjoy!
This recipe was designed to serve two people, I stretched it to serve four. If you are doing this for a dinner party I would double the recipe to serve 4 comfortably.
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