Driving through the rolling hills of Cowichan Valley, we went in search of Merridale Estate Cidery in Cobble Hill. We arrived at our destination after making a few turns off Highway 1 and following the small Merridale apple signs. Merridale has been open since 1990 with a few recent additions which make it a culinary treat! A brick oven was built outside by the patio and is now used to make all their bakery goodies by their Master Baker Alain Bousseau and to make pizzas during the summer months. A major addition to Merridale was La Pommeraie Bistro, which was opened in 2005 to serve food that would highlight the already popular ciders being offered at the ciderhouse.
We decided to enjoy our lunch out on the sunny enclosed patio where we could see rows and rows of apple trees. The menu is simple and they incorporate seasonal changes. We settled on three dishes to try: the Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie and the Lamb Burger, and a special Seafood Pot Pie.
Of course, we couldn’t eat here without also ordering the cider flights.
It was fun to try all the different ciders and to taste the flavour and textural differences. It was a collection of 6 ciders arranged in order from the very dry Cidre Normandie to the sweet Cyser. The Somerset cider really did taste like champagne and the Merri Berri, a cider mixed with unfermented berries and fruits, was a general favourite and can luckily be found in most liquor stores.
We were happy to get a chance to meet Chef Dave Woolfall, who came out to talk to us. We never expected to meet such a skilled chef of international fame right here on Vancouver Island. He has been cooking for 30 years in London, France, Israel before recently coming to White Rock and now Vancouver Island to be reunited with the love of his life from highschool. He has also ran restaurants with Michelin Stars and AA Rosettes in London!
He imparted some words of wisdom for home cooks like us:
When starting out, don’t copy Gordon Ramsey or famous chef recipes with 20 ingredients. Keep it simple. Those recipes are complicated on purpose – If everyone could make his food, he wouldn’t be so famous.
I like that because keeping it simple means less dishes in the kitchen for me to wash up and unknown ingredients to buy! He also gave us this other little tip:
Don’t try to make the food look like the pictures in cookbooks or magazines. Restaurants and chefs pay a lot of money to make food look good. Focus on the taste.
I can safely say that I’ve tried to copy recipes and came out at the end wondering why mine didn’t look as good as theirs! I’ll keep this excellent piece of advice in mind for next time.
Below is the recipe for Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie that Chef Woolfall happily shared with us.
Summary
Preparation Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 1 hour
Servings: 5 to 6
Meal Type: Lunch/Dinner
Total Cost: $44.30
Recipe Rating: 
Ingredients
- 5 free-range chicken breasts, diced ($17.00; mine were not free-range)
- 750mL Scrumpy cider from Merridale Ciderworks ($12.10)
- 500mL concentrated chicken stock ($1.50; I used chicken broth)
- 3 large carrots, diced ($0.70)
- 1/2 head celery, diced ($0.75)
- 1 medium onion, diced ($1.30)
- 1lb. crimini mushrooms, sliced ($4.50)
- 1/4 cup smooth Dijon mustard ($0.85)
- 1/8 cup tarragon ($0.75)
- 500mL heavy cream ($2.25)
- flour/water mix to thicken the soup ($0.10; I used approximately 1/4 cup flour)
- puff pastry or pie crust ($2.50)
Procedure
1. Bring the stock and Merridale cider to a boil.
2. Add the diced chicken and cook until the meat is just firm. Remove and set meat aside. I let the chicken cook in the stock for about five minutes.
3. Add the vegetables and mushrooms to the stock and cook until they just retain a bite. Remove and set aside. The vegetables took a little longer than the meat and I let it cook in the stock for about 15 minutes.
4. Add the tarragon, mustard and cream to the stock and bring to a full boil. I couldn’t find fresh tarragon anywhere… Not even sure if it’s available fresh anywhere, so I used dried tarragon.
5. Mix some flour with water and whisk this into the stock to thicken it. Make sure the liquid is thick enough to support the ingredients inside the pie. It shouldn’t have a thin, soupy consistency. I happened to only have whole wheat flour at home, but I think it would have worked much better with white flour. I just made sure that the flour/water mix was quite thin, which allowed the bigger particles of whole wheat to fall to the bottom of my cup, which I then disposed of after carefully pouring in the liquid portion. Point? Use white flour!
6. Add the chicken and vegetables back to the pot. Simmer for 10 minutes to allow the flavours to mix.
7. Divide between pie dishes. Make sure you are using oven-safe dishes!
8. Top with your favourite pastry. La Pommeraie uses puff pastry for their version, but you can use short crust, if you’d like!
9. Put the dish in the oven to bake the pastry and brown the crust. It took about 20 minutes at 400C for mine to turn out.
Results
I was actually surprised that I didn’t have to add any salt to it at all, but it had so much flavour already. I found it to be a little too rich so I would add less whipping cream next time. Mine doesn’t look like La Pommeraie’s, but hey, it tastes good and that’s what matters for now! I put an estimated time of 1.5 hours to make this, but I’m fairly slow at chopping vegetables and cooking in general. Thank you so much to the staff at Merridale Estate Cidery and a big thank you to Chef Dave Woolfall for taking time during a busy afternoon lunchtime to chat with us and take us out to the brick oven patio. La Pommeraie is easily one of our top favourite restaurants on the Island and we’ll be back!
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Tags: Chef, Chicken, Dave Woolfall, dinner, pot pie, Recipe, vancouver island
