Woman's Own February 20 1960 Page 51

The Shy One

woman's own  SCHOOL of COOKERY conducted by PHILIP HARBEN something different for Sunday

JUST on a year ago I wrote in WOMAN'S OWN: 'I can tell you' what nine out of ten British families had for dinner last Sunday: roast meat, roast potatoes, green vegetables (followed by apple pie, I shouldn't wonder).' From the letters this remark provoked I realized that I had misjudged you! You are not so hide-bound in your habits of Sunday eating as I had thought. 

And from many conversations that I have had I have come to know that most people are nothing like so Sunday-joint-minded as they used to be. 

IT'S TRAVEL THAT DOES IT THEY do say that travel broadens the mind. Certainly it broadens the dining-room table. People now eat with glee and relish dishes that before the last war would have been regarded with deep suspicion. 

So I have no qualms at all about offering you this way of cooking a chicken which is probably entirely different from any way in which you have done a chicken before. Yet there is nothing outlandish or foreign about it at all-it is based on (and I think an improvement on) an idea that I picked up in a famous hotel in Southampton of all places. 

WHOLE CHICKEN PIE. I CAN think of no better name for the dish than this, for that is just what it is----a chicken baked whole in piecrust. 

Having drawn your chicken (no need to truss it) choose an ovenware dish into which it will neatly fit. Now make some good short paste (1 lb. self-raising flour to 1/4 lb. fat) and divide it into two parts, one-being about twice the size of the other. Roll the smaller piece out until it is large enough to line the dish completely. (Grease the dish first.) 

Before putting the chicken in place you can, if you like (but this is optional), put in a layer of rashers of bacon. 

FINISHING AND BAKING ROLL the remaining paste out until it is about 1 inch thick, cover the chicken completely, having moistened the edges of the top and bottom sheets of paste, and press them together to form a good seal all round. Decorate the surface with fancy shapes cut from the thin-rolled trimmings, paint it all over with beaten egg, bake for 1-11/2 hours at Electric 400 or Gas 6. Remove the pastry to carve the bird, but swerve a piece with it.