Chicken, lemon and basil pot pies

I have been on a mission this week to feed the family healthy dinners. Still sticking with 'back to basics' cooking, I am seeing what dinners I can pull out of my....hat, so to speak.

Just like my green goddess craving, chicken pies have been right up there with me wanting some of that heart warming comfort.
I find pot pies are a great way for me to fill the boys up on extra veggies. Max isn't really my concern because he is a machine when it comes to dinner these days. Alex is more of a concern for me. He seems to know when I want him to dig in and eat his recommended daily serve of vegetables.
Take last night for example- I made some tasty little chorizo, spinach, ricotta and tomato logs (blog to come) that looked pretty yummy. Alex cut them open, screwed up his nose and began pulling out the filling and replacing it with lettuce and the sour cream and basil dressing.
Don't get me wrong, I am happy this was one of the first times he happily ate lettuce, but his water intake is not the problem and as far as lettuce goes, it isn't topping him up with vitamins and minerals like my good friend spinach and tomato!

Right, rant over....back to pot pies

Max volunteered to help me make dinner (must have something to do with the three day cooking course he did at the cooking school last week during school holidays). While I was cutting up the chicken, he started in on dicing the vegetables.

 I'd love to say I have a recipe for this but it was kind of done in the method of a handful of this and a pinch of that. I can tell you that I did sear off my chicken pieces and then put them to one side while I used the same pan to saute all my vegetables (carrot, corn, zucchini) with a bit of salt and pepper. I then put the sauteed vegetables on top of the seared chicken in a medium bowl while I melted some butter, sauteed some diced onions with a touch of garlic then added a good spoon of flour to make a roux. Once the flour was cooked out a little I added chicken stock to thicken, brought it to the boil and then added extra milk to thin slightly (if I wasn't health consious, that would of been cream!).

When my sauce came to the boil, I added the seared chicken pieces and vegetables, folded it all through then removed it from the heat; added shredded basil leaves and the zest of one lemon for a bit of a zing. It was smelling pretty fabulous, so I ladled the mixture into pie containers, popped on the pastry lids, brushed with egg and put them in the oven while I hung a load of washing on the line, ran the boys bath and answered a few emails.

Nic walked in the door just as I was pulling them out and we all sat down to a delicious pie that didn't take all that long to put together.
I'm sorry to say Alex did not eat all his dinner...you know the pastry was the first to go, followed by maybe three corn kernals then we got his famous line of  'I'm tired......I'm not hungry'.
We all polished ours off while Alex fed himself yet another meal of thin air!