SWEET ART BY TEMI

Young-Man-Catching Sunday Afternoon Dinner

Young-Man-Catching Sunday Afternoon Dinner

Friday 14 June 2019 • No comments

The first story in 'Hallelujah! the welcome table' was so funny. I really don't want to give too much away in case you'd like to read it. I'll just say you're never too old to fish! This chapter was called 'Pie Fishing' and told the story of an old lady who made it very clear that she loved young men. She lured them to her home with her amazing cooking, especially her famous Lemon Meringue Pie. Is the way to a mans heart truly through his stomach? Is it that simple? Well I say true or not, if food can help an old lady get her groove on, it's a useful skill to have. Who says food has to take you all the way to a mans heart? Everybody needs good lovin'!


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.





About thirty minutes before the one and a half was up, I prepared the drop dumplings batter. I sifted flour, salt and baking powder together, rubbed in butter with my fingers then stirred in milk. Then the dumpling batter was dropped in the chicken broth by the spoonful. They floated on top of the broth and simmered for about 15-20 minutes. It also helped thickened the broth a little.


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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