Chicken & Dumplings

oh, how I love snow days :) Almost two feet of snow and still snowing !! The hard part, of course, is deciding what to make...blizzards make me crave warm comforting stew-type concoctions. The problem this week, though, is that we'd done lamb stew and jambalaya over the weekend, and have been eating both for days...what to make that wasn't anything like them ?

Chicken and dumplings is a dish that I've always liked the idea of...it's a little out of my bailiwick, not super common in New England, but then again I'm not exactly known for sticking close to home culinarily :) I have a crockpot Chicken and Dumplings recipe (included in my Crockpot Conversations blog entry) which works really, really well..but since I was going to be home all day, I wanted to try something a little closer to the traditional. So, of course...traditional, Southern...who ya gonna call ? Paula Deen, of course. Everything looked fine to me until I got to the bottom...canned cream of chicken soup ? Oh no...kissing cousins with cream of mushroom soup, which the fantastic Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook calls the Voldemort of the cooking world : That Which Shall Not Be Named. Clearly, not what I was after...so I checked in with Simply Recipes . Much, much better....well, except I didn't have any bone-in chicken, so I wasn't making my own stock. I did have chicken thighs, though, and stock ready to go....combine the two recipes, tweak and adapt for what I had on hand, and throw in some of my own touches...folks, we have a winner !!! Chicken and vegetables swimming in a rich, unctuous base with well-developed flavors...light, fluffy dumplings... happy shovelers and snowbound people. Yep, I love snow days :)

A note on the peas...I would have added them if I had them, though I list them as optional as some folks don't like them - and the dish was perfectly fine without them. Also, if you are like my sister and adverse to dark meat chicken, go ahead and make it with boneless skinless breast...won't be quite the same, but SOME people prefer it that way :)

Chicken & Dumplings

Chicken:

2 leeks, white and tender green parts only, chopped

Vegetable oil for pot

4 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

5 cups chicken stock

1 bay leaf

1 sprig fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried leaves)

4 carrots, sliced

4 stalks celery, sliced

8 – 10 pearl onions, peeled and quartered (or halved, depending on size)

½ cup green peas, frozen (optional)

6 tblsp butter, unsalted

6 t tblsp flour

1 cup mushrooms, sliced

¼ cup heavy cream

¼ cup chopped parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Dumplings:

2 cups cake flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup buttermilk

2 tblsp melted butter

To make the chicken: swirl some oil in the bottom of a Dutch oven over medium heat. Sauté the leeks for  5-10 minutes or so, until they start to soften and brown a little. Throw the chicken in with the leeks, add salt and pepper , and let the chicken start to brown too. Add the stock and bay leaf and bring up to a simmer. Add the carrots and simmer 5 minutes, then add the celery and onions. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, or until the carrots and chicken are just about done. Add the green peas.

In a separate saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Let this roux cook a few minutes, stirring the whole time, until it starts to brown. Now take a ladleful of the stock from your chicken and add it to the roux, whisking the whole time. Repeat this a few times, until you’ve added 3 cups or so of the stock. Add the mushrooms and the cream, and let simmer a few minutes while you pull the chicken apart – just go in there with two forks and shred it right in the pot.  Stir the mushroom mixture back into the Dutch oven with the chicken, add the parsley, and stir well. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed.

Make the dumplings: sift together the dry ingredients, then add the buttermilk and melted butter. Mix this gently until it just comes together and you can pinch off pieces –  larger than a grape but smaller than a walnut, slightly flattened (don’t over-handle the dough though, you want to keep them light). Have the stew at a slow simmer, and drop the dumplings on top –spread out as much as you can. Put the lid on, and let them simmer for 15 minutes – no peeking ! Test with a toothpick after time is up, and if they still have any raw doughy parts let them go another 5 – 10 minutes.

Mark's Jambalaya

Oh yeah baby !!

As I've mentioned, my husband Mark is as crazy a foodie as I am - and an unbelievable cook. His input is sprinkled throughout this blog...along with a few - but not many -  of his recipes. He's a much more unstructured cook than I am, which is a fantastic thing...until someone asks him how to make something. He knows in his head how to do it, but that doesn't really translate well into a written recipe. When he decided to make jambalaya today, though, I knew I had to shadow him and to get the whole thing down - this is hands down his most requested recipe, the one everyone has wanted for years. The recipe has never existed in written form....until now. Poor Mark...to his credit, he was very patient with me :)

Jambalaya, for those who aren't familiar with it, is a Creole dish...a New Orleans classic consisting of chicken, sausages and ham, seafood, rice and vegetables, sort of similar to the Spanish Paella. The etymology of the name is unclear - a strong theory bases it on "jambon" or "jamon", the French and Spanish words for "ham". Ham is usually a component, along with other pork products like sausages...but there's so much more going on there that it would seem odd to name it after the ham (then again, it wouldn't be the same without it). There's also a reference to "jambalaia”, meaning jumble or mishmash, in an 1878  Provençal dictionary. Wherever the word came from, though, nowadays it just means "delicious."

The route Mark took to jambalaya nirvana is actually kind of funny. One day many, many years ago, I came home from a Diet Workshop meeting with a little cookbooklet in hand, which contained a diet version of jambalaya. I made this version quite often and it was very tasty (basically, it replaced all the pork products with turkey ham and didn't use oil or scallops), but once I quit Diet Workshop, Mark sort of took over and reverse-engineered it. This baby is all his, and it it most definitely a Culinary Orgasm.

A few notes about this recipe : first off, it makes an absolute ton - about 10 quarts (one of the reasons we own multiple 20-quart stockpots). This can definitely be halved or even quartered if you don't need quite so much. Second, the better your ingredients the better your dish (this is true in all cooking, really). We were able to score some gorgeous D’Artagnan Andouille and Chorizo at Russo's (foodie heaven...I love that store), along with fantastic produce of course. Quality ingredients give you a huge head start on the road to Culinary Orgasm.

And now, the recipe. Extra photos at the end !

Jambalaya

Vegetable oil, for pot

3 ½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into roughly 2 inch chunks

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 lb andouille, sliced

½  lb chorizo, sliced 

1 lb ham, cubed

3 sweet onions (i.e. Vidalias), chopped

2 red peppers, chopped

2 green peppers, chopped

8 stalks celery , cut into 1 inch lengths

12 cups chicken stock

5 ½ cups rice (converted, i.e. Uncle Ben’s)

Few grinds black pepper

½ - 1 tsp chipotle powder, to taste

Few generous shakes Tabasco, to taste

35 oz can whole plum tomatoes, with juice

½ lb bay scallops

2 lbs large shrimp (21-25 ct), shelled & deveined

Extra Tabasco for serving

Heat oil in bottom of large pot. Brown chicken and garlic in oil; remove from pan. Add a little more oil, heat, and add onion, peppers and celery. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally,  with lid on for 10 minutes or so or until vegetables are soft. Add chicken back to pan along with andouille, chorizo, and ham. Turn heat to high and add chicken stock. Bring to boil and stir in rice, pepper, chipotle powder and Tabasco. Crush tomatoes with your hands and add to pot along with juice. When everything returns to a boil, turn heat down and simmer 15-20 minutes or until rice is just about done. Add scallops and simmer 3 – 5 minutes, then add shrimp and cook another 3 - 5 minutes until seafood is all cooked.

Serve in bowls, pass the Tabasco and crusty bread for dipping (sourdough is perfect)

chicken browning in pot

sausage ready to go

veggies

the whole shebang !

Irish Soda Bread

grand, super, brilliant !

First off, a shout out to Culinary Orgasm's new official main photographer...#1 Son Alex. Alex took all of the pictures in this entry with his new Nikon Coolpix, and he's done a great job - see the end of this entry for more of his work. Much easier having someone else wield the camera !

So...Irish Soda Bread. I cannot make this bread without thinking about Uncle Ed. Growing up, I spent every summer with Uncle Ed (great uncle, technically) and Narn (my great aunt Alice, who everyone called "Narn"). Uncle Ed was a textbook Southie guy, an Irish American war vet with a gruff exterior covering the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known. Uncle Ed took to retirement in Maine with gusto - dog food in his pockets everywhere he went, a fixture on his benches waiting for the mail, reading his Herald, listening to the Sox or just watching the world go by. He doted on his nieces and nephews, and no birthday was ever complete without Uncle Ed calling and singing "Happy Birthday" in his trademark vibrato-filled baritone. Lord, I miss that man.

In any event, as much as Uncle Ed loved Maine, he was always so happy when folks came down from Boston - especially from Southie, and especially if they came bearing Irish Soda Bread for him to have with his beloved tea. His eyes would light up, and he'd make that stuff last as long as he possibly could. But it was only when I married a part-Irishman and learned to actually appreciate a good corned beef dinner that I even thought about making it myself. It took a few tries, but now I really have it down...I think Uncle Ed would have absolutely loved this, and that is saying something. I only wish I had made it for him when he was still alive...don't put things off, folks. Do things for the people you love now. I promise you, you'll both feel better for it.

A few notes about the ingredients...it calls for two ingredients you may not have around the house, buttermilk and Golden Cane Sugar. Golden Cane Sugar is a very light brown natural sugar with a fantastic flavor - like brown sugar but not quite as much molasses flavor. I use it in all sorts of things so usually have it around - but you can very easily substitute one tablespoon of regular brown sugar and one of white sugar with no ill effects. The buttermilk, though, really is essential. The slight acidity of the buttermilk reacts with the baking soda to make your final bread super light and moist (the bane of many soda bread recipes is that the loaf is heavy and dry). If you are absolutely in a bind, add two tablespoons of white vinegar to the 3/4 cup of milk and let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes...it will work, but really not as well as real buttermilk. Buttermilk is sold right next to the regular milk at my trusty Stop + Shop, so it's not hard to find...this bread - and Uncle Ed - are worth the real thing.

Irish Soda Bread

2 cups flour
2 tablespoons Golden Cane Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
1/2 cup currants

In a bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or two knives. Add the buttermilk and mix thoroughly into a soft dough. Add the currants. Knead the dough lightly on a lightly floured board for 3 minutes or until smooth. Form the dough into a 7 inch flat round, and place in a lightly oiled cake tin. Cut a cross about 1/2 inch deep in the center of the round. Bake in a 375 oven 40 minutes, and cool on a wire rack.



dry ingredients waiting for butter (double batch) 



mix until it's a soft dough

kneading in the currants (my bowl is huge so I can do it right in the bowl)

cut a cross into the top

out of the oven

perfect !!

don't you want some ?

Mark's Lamb Stew...it doesn't only go with corned beef, of course !