Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and Dumplings -American Style
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg.

Winter's here - I've had flu... Yuck! This evening - after having made it in to work (unlike some of my work-mates!)... and back home again - I decided to make a variation of what is fondly known in my NY-based African-American family as "Jewish Penicillin". Chicken soup, to you guys... We had some left-over roast chicken from the weekend, so....

I removed the chicken from the bones and added it to a pound-and-a-half or so of, skinned and jointed chicken wings, which had been boiled for about 30 minutes with some seasonings and vegetables (a couple of chopped onions, a bay leaf, 5 cloves of garlic, a leek, 3 carrots, 3 ribs of celery, a stock cube, some herbs (we're talking thyme, oregano, parsley, rosemary and sage - just a big pinch of each) and some salt and pepper. I tasted the seasonings and added a couple of tablespoons of butter to the 'soup'.

Then I consulted my Fanny Farmer cookbook for a dumpling recipe since I'd never tried making dumplings before. Fanny says:

Feather dumplings
1 cup self-rising flour (OR 1 c. flour with 2 tsp baking powder)
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (I used a bit of a stale loaf of French bread, grated)
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg, well beaten
2 tbsp butter, melted
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/3 cup milk
1 tbsp finely minced parsley
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine the flour, bread crumbs, (and baking powder, if using) and salt in a mixing bowl, and stir to mix. In another bowl lightly beat the egg, melted butter, onion and milk together. Stir into the dry ingredients to make a stiff batter. Stir in the parsley and pepper. When the chicken has had its 30 minute simmer, drop spoonfuls of dough on top of the bubbling broth. Cover and steam for 20 minutes without lifting the cover.

Depending on the size of your spoon (!) serve 1 -3 dumplings per person.

This was a surprisingly tasty and satisfying meal. Since both Steve and I were suffering with the tail end of flu, it was just the thing - leisurely to cook and easy to eat.