Chicken and Dumplings.

So for no real reason, I decided to make chicken and dumplings today.

I don’t normally make them, in fact, I would probably say that I don’t typically like them. So, Virginia told me what she was looking for, and I went looking for a recipe. In my true form, I looked at a ton of recipes, and didn’t like any of them. … for a meal that I’ve never made before… So, I took parts from a few recipes and made my own bastardized recipe.

So, here we go. Let’s start with an ingredients list.

Chicken:

• 1 Whole Chicken 5-8lbs (Neck, heart, liver and other gross stuff thrown in the garbage)
• 1 32oz Box of Chicken Stock
• 1 cup celery
• 1 cup carrots
• kosher slat
• pepper
• turmeric
• Thyme
• Large Onion
• Clove Garlic

Step 1:

Make sure your birdie fits in your stock pot. (Side note, this is the only time I’ve ever tried to make stock in a stock pot.)

Next… Turn this:

Into this:

Then toss all of the above into the pot on top of your chicken.

Add some salt, and pepper and chicken stock.

Now, put it on the stove, and add some thyme and about 1tsp of Turmeric while it’s getting up to temperature…You want to bring it to a boil, then drop the temperature down a little bit, and let it simmer for a while.

Now… you let it cook. I had about a 8 pound chicken … so it took about an hour.

After an hour, pull the chicken out of the pot, leaving all of the awesome in the pot… we’ll get back to that later.

BAM! This is the bird. The Turmeric makes it a little yellow… but you’re going to rip off all of the skin and throw it away anyhow…. so.. take the above, and strip it down.

Take all of the meat, and cut it up into reasonably bite sized pieces….

Now, for the dumplings…

Ingredients:

• 3 Cups Cake Flour
• 3/4 tsp Baking SODA
• 3/4 tsp Salt
• 4-1/2 tbsp shortening
• 1 cup milk

So, mix your dry ingredients together, then add your Crisco and mix by hand until it’s evenly distributed.

Then, add milk 1/4 cup at a time until the dough begins to form. (it might not take the entire amount)

Once your dough is starting to form, pull it out, lay it on a floured surface, and roll it out.

You’re wanting to get it between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Once you’ve got it down to the right thickness, grab a knife or pizza cutter, and cut it into 1” x 3” strips (Note – I would make the strips smaller…. maybe 1/2” x 2” or so.. and definitely on the 1.8” side of thickness)

After you’ve got them all cut up… let them sit for about a half hour to get a little stiff.

while you’re waiting, measure out 6 cups of your leftover broth. Put this back in your stock pot and bring it up to just above a simmer… maybe about medium to medium high on the burner.

Then, after a half hour, it’s time to drop in your dumplings.

You’re going to let these go for 6ish to 8ish minutes.. or so with the lid on…. they’ll plump up and cook a little bit…

Now, add your chicken back to the mix.

Give it a stir, put a lid on it, and let it go for another 10-15 minutes….

Things should get a little thicker at this point… the cake flour in the dumplings kind of thickens stuff up while it cooks….

 

Now, you can ladle it out into a bowl and chow down!

So… as I said above, next time, I’d make the dumplings smaller. I’m not a big fan of doughy anything.. so that’s probably why I’m typically not a fan of chicken and dumplings in the first place…

 

I like a dash of hot sauce on mine… VA added a bit of heavy cream to her helping… I’m not any kind of expert on the subject, but I think you can pretty much do whatever you want to it, and it’s acceptable… Most recipes just tell you to add salt and pepper.

 

This recipe does make a rather large amount… so invite some people over for dinner, or be prepared to put a bunch in the fridge.

 

I was impressed by the recipe… Like I said multiple times, I typically don’t like chicken and dumplings.. but even thought the dumplings were a little thicker than I would have liked, they weren’t doughy. The chicken stock was nice and thick.. the veggies were.. well.. let’s face it.. un-noticeable…, all in all.. it’s some pretty awesome comfort food.

 

 

Since this is right after Thanksgiving, you could also do this with leftover turkey… but you’d have to use just the boxed stock… I’d cut up all of the turkey, mix it in the stock.. cook on low heat for a while to get everything nice and tender.. then continue as above.

Thai Pineapple Pork Curry

So tonight, Virginia decided to make something with curry. … I’m not a big fan of curry. I had never been exposed to it until I went to Kuwait, but they put that business on EVERYTHING. I’m pretty sure they had curry ice cream over there. But, I didn’t have any better idea, so… it happened.

So, since I had to suffer through it, so do you.

Step 1. Cook your Rice. The recipe we were supposed to be following called for Jasmine Rice. But, it also called for chicken. Stupid recipe. We made our regular white sticky rice. While your rice is cooking, you can rock on through the rest of the recipe.

Step 2 – Make sure your baby won’t roll off of the table while you’re working.

 

Cut up some chicken… or pork. … We had some pork loin thawed, and no chicken in the fridge, so it was an easy decision.

1” or 1-1/2” cubes should do it. You’re looking to have about a pound – pound and a half. More meat is always better. Toss the meat in a pan with a few teaspoons of sesame oil and start rolling it around, browning it.

Now, get some liquid ready. First mix 1/8 cup red curry paste and a 13.5oz can of coconut milk together…

Note: Coconut milk is kinda disgusting looking. You know how to make it more disgusting looking? Add curry and mix well.

At this point, your meat should be getting a little browned, so dump the goop into it.

Now add 1/8 of a cup of sugar.

and then a can of drained bamboo shoots (1-1/2 Cups)

You’re also going to need to add 2 TBSP of fish sauce. You may have wanted to add a little squirt of Extra Virgin Olive oil to help brown the meat earlier as well… so… here’s a picture of that stuff.

Now, while that’s cooking up, your kitchen is going to smell like hot death. Seriously, I was choking back some rather strong urges to lose my lunch. Virginia didn’t seem to have any problem with it, but she has been changing a lot of dirty diaper lately.

Now, chop some veggies. 1/2 an onion, and the equivalent of 1/2 of two different colored bell peppers.

Then, add veggies to the stuff in the pan.

Bring to a boil and then let it simmer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, add one cup of chunked pineapple and let simmer for another 5 minutes.

After it’s simmer down and everything is softened up, serve over rice. According to VA, it’s supposed to be pretty juicy, and the rice is supposed to suck up the juice.

BAM. There it is.

It was better than I expected, and once it simmered for a while, it didn’t so much smell like hot garbage. Virginia didn’t have any problem with the smell, and she said that she was happy with the taste of it as well. So, I think VA would give it 2 thumbs up. I’d give it a “ehhh… it didn’t kill me…. as much as I wanted it to.”