Chicken and Dumplings
The pie was the star of the show in the story but let's not forget it was an entire Sunday Afternoon Dinner with the pie being the dessert. There was a recipe for 'Fried Yellow Summer Squash' and 'Green Peas and Lettuce' as well but I couldn’t find yellow summer squash(or yellow courgettes which was listed as an alternative), fresh peas or iceberg lettuce so I decided to skip those side dishes. I'm familiar with the Chinese version of dumplings(which I love) that have a filling but I wasn't sure how these 'drop dumplings' were meant to look. I wish this book had a few more pictures, but its nothing a simple Google search couldn't fix. 'Chicken and Dumplings' is basically a chicken soup with dollops of flour based batter boiled in the broth. The ingredients were simple.
A whole chicken
Six chicken wings
Green pepper
A Spanish onions
Carrots
Celery
I also made a 'bouquet garni' for the first time. That's a fancy word for a pouch to keep ingredients you want flavour from but don't want floating around in your final dish. This bouquet garni had bay leaves, tops of the celery, black peppercorns and butter. Now they're all meant to be tied up in a piece of cheesecloth but I'm in Lagos and it's hard to find. I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could probably find it but it would probably be overpriced and not worth the stress so I did a little research and found out that gauze works well as an alternative, so that's what I used. After I cut the whole chicken into pieces, I put it in the pot with the six wings and added water to cover an inch above the chicken then I chopped up all the vegetables, sautéed the onions and threw them all in with the chicken along with the bouquet garni. I seasoned with salt and ground black pepper and simmered slowly for 1 1/2 hours.
butter rubbed in |
ready to drop |
Really simple ingredients but so delicious and satisfying. It's been raining constantly in Lagos lately so this was the best warm Sunday lunch.
Chicken and Dumplings |
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