I’ve been wanting to try making something with what Americans call biscuits for a while. They like to have these scone-like things with chicken, and I’ve been intrigued as to what all the fuss is about.

Luckily my faithful ATK Healthy book has a lowered-calorie chicken pot pie. Pot pie was another American thing I wanted to try, so this is a real result of a recipe!

You start by making the biscuits, which are like a soda-bread dough using baking powder and soda, along with buttermilk, to leaven the flour.

Mixing dry and wet gives you a dough which you split into buns on a lined baking tray.

After 10 minutes in a hot oven they’re part baked, ready for finishing off later in the pot.

For the pie filling you’d normally start with a roux, but to avoid excess butter this recipe just toasts the flour. It felt very odd trying flour!

Once toasted you remove it and set it aside, then fry up your chicken pieces (thighs in our case) on one side.

Then you add all your veg to the same pan: carrots, leaks, peppers, onions, etc.

While that fries up you mix stock, dry sherry and the toasted flour, then add that to the pan, then re-add the chicken and simmer until the chicken is poached.

Then the chicken comes out again, and gets shredded.

The chicken then goes back in the pot, along with frozen peas and baby spinach, a shot of cream, plus the biscuits. This then gets cooked in the oven for ten minutes. And yes: it feels very cheffy to put the frying pan in the oven!

After cooking the sauce has thickened, and the biscuits finished cooking.

Then it’s time to dish up!

And the eating… Well we could see why Americans love their chicken pot pies so much: it was delicious! And you really couldn’t tell it was a low-cal meal, it was really rich and creamy. Although you’re only supposed to have one biscuit each…