Sunday, January 18, 2015

Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and dumplings mean different dishes depending on where they originate. In southern Louisiana, it’s fluffy drop dumplings, cooked in a roux-based simmering rich brown gravy with stewed chicken, just like my grandmother used to make.

Food Lust People Love: Chicken and dumplings mean different dishes depending on where they originate. In southern Louisiana, it’s fluffy drop dumplings, cooked in a roux-based simmering rich brown gravy with stewed chicken, just like my grandmother used to make.



When one lives in a place where bargaining is standard practice, there is a hierarchy of pricing guidelines and most folks assume I’m a tourist. So, when I am out and about in a local market and someone asks, “Where are you from?” I always answer, “I live here.” And then, if I am truly interested in buying the thing, I start chatting with the vendor. “I live here” puts me squarely in Resident Expat sector, which usually gets me a decent price but not as low as it could be if I cajole my way up the Friendliness/Bargaining Savvy Continuum. If you know what I mean. Here, I’ve drawn you a handy chart.

Sadly, I've met folks from a few countries who could qualify as "ugly Americans."



It’s only when someone pushes further, that I might say that I am from the United States. If you prod even more, you’ll get “The South.”  We have to be having a real conversation for me to get into, “Well, I was born in Louisiana but I lived more years in Texas, but Louisiana is still kind of home because that’s where my grandparents were. Actually, I’ve lived overseas even more years than I have lived in the US.” Whew.

But when it comes to cooking, the first hometown favorites that come to mind are my grandmothers’ traditional Cajun dishes, like chicken and sausage gumbo,   courtbouillon, maque choux, smothered pork chops, smothered cabbage with pork, eggplant casserole with shrimp or crawfish etouffee, just to name a few. I’ve shared all of those already, as you can tell by the links, so I was wracking my brain for another of my grandmothers’ dishes that I haven’t shared for this week’s Sunday Supper hometown favorites theme. Perhaps smothered round steak or cabbage rolls or crawfish fettuccine casserole? And then it hit me!

A couple of years ago, when we were living in Cairo, it was chilly, my heater was broken and I was cold and lonely. I needed some comfort food. So I called my mom on Skype and discussed the ins and outs of my grandmother’s chicken and dumplings recipe. I made it that day and even took photos but I never shared it here. It's the perfect dish for this week’s Sunday Supper Hometown theme, and it's kind of chilly here in Dubai, so I made it again. The roux-based gravy is wonderful, the chicken is tender and falling off the bone. And the dumplings! The dumplings are light and fluffy, so wonderful that my husband went back for seconds of just the dumplings with extra gravy. As my grandparents would say, “Talk about good!”

Chicken and Dumplings

Any recipe that includes a copper-penny-colored roux is a good recipe in my book. If you'd like to see photos of the evolution of your roux from blonde to dark copper, check out this post: https://www.foodlustpeoplelove.com/2015/09/how-to-make-roux.html

Ingredients
For the chicken stew:
1 whole chicken
Sea salt
Black pepper
Cayenne
Olive oil
4 tablespoons flour
1 medium onion
2 long stalks celery

For the dumplings:
2 cups or 250g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1 large egg

Note: My grandmother would have undoubtably finished this dinner with a sprinkling of chopped parsley. I plumb forgot.

Method
Cut your chicken up into at least eight pieces and season liberally with salt, black pepper and cayenne. If the breasts are large, I cut them in half again to get 10 pieces. I go pretty heavy on the cayenne because we like things spicy but use your best judgment for your family’s tastes.



Heat a good drizzle of olive oil in a frying pan and panfry the chicken until it is golden on both sides.



While the chicken is browning, dice your onion and celery.



Once the chicken is browned, remove it from the pan and set aside.  Add the four tablespoons of flour into the pan and stir until it is completely combined with the oil in the pan. Use a wooden spoon to loosen all the lovely browned bits that are stuck to the pan.



Cook the flour/oil mixture, formally known as a roux, over a medium heat, stirring almost constant, until it reaches a lovely dark copper color. Make sure not to let it catch and scorch or your gravy will taste burnt.



Add in the chopped onion and celery and continue cooking for several minutes until they soften.


Slowly add in a couple of cups of water and stir. Keep stirring until you have a lovely brown gravy without lumps of flour.

Add the browned chicken back into the pot, along with any juice that is in the plate it was resting on.

The gravy should come most of the way up the sides of the chicken. Add a little more water, if necessary.

Cover the pan and turn the fire down to simmer. Leave to simmer for about 45-55 minutes, checking occasionally that the water doesn’t completely evaporate and adding more if necessary. About halfway through the cooking time, turn the chicken over.



When the chicken is tender and cooked through, lightly whisk your egg with your milk and then combine your dumpling ingredients in a mixing bowl, stirring until just mixed.



Remove your chicken from the pan and set aside. Cover it so it stays warm.



Use a tablespoon to spoon the dumpling batter into the simmering gravy, leaving room between the dumplings so they can puff up as they cook. The batter comes off the spoon more easily if the spoon is wet so rinse it with water first and between scoops. Put the lid on for a few minutes.



Remove the lid and turn the dumplings over and replace the lid for another minute or two.



Transfer the dumplings to a plate and keep them warm until ready to serve, while you cook the remaining dumplings. They will soak up some of the gravy so you can add in a little water and stir well between the two batches if you need to.

Serve the chicken and dumplings with the remaining gravy from the pan. And my grandmother would always have had a vegetable or two alongside.

Food Lust People Love: Chicken and dumplings mean different dishes depending on where they originate. In southern Louisiana, it’s fluffy drop dumplings, cooked in a roux-based simmering rich brown gravy with stewed chicken, just like my grandmother used to make.


Enjoy!

Food Lust People Love: Chicken and dumplings mean different dishes depending on where they originate. In southern Louisiana, it’s fluffy drop dumplings, cooked in a roux-based simmering rich brown gravy with stewed chicken, just like my grandmother used to make.
So fluffy inside!


I am so excited about this week’s Sunday Supper because I know I am going to learn about dishes from so many different places around the US and the world through the loving, perhaps even a bit nostalgic, eyes of my fellow Sunday Supper colleagues and our wonderful host Coleen of The Redhead Baker. What a fabulous list, don’t you agree?!

Breakfast
Drinks
Appetizers and Snacks
Main Dishes
Side Dishes
Desserts

Pin the Chicken and Dumplings!



Posted by at 5:46:00 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, January 15, 2015

Glazed Chocolate Macaroon Bundt Cake #BundtBakers

As if deep dark chocolate cake with coconut macaroon filling wasn’t rich enough, I poured on a dark chocolate ganache and topped it with more sweet coconut.


Sometimes when I have a few minutes to spare, I troll the interwebs doing random searches. Once upon a time, a search on my surname led me to an old 1932 MG-D Tourer that was for sale, and according to the original sales receipt, it was a gift, brand new, from my husband’s grandmother to his grandfather! So, of course, we had to buy it.

Another time I located the father of my long lost best friend in third grade (Campo Alegre – Caracas, Venezuela 1971-1972) on a genealogy site and wrote the webmaster to please pass on my desire to reconnect. He wrote Stella’s dad and the next thing I knew, we were chatting away a mile a minute on Skype and I was being introduced to her adorable girls. The internet is awesome in the truest sense of the word.

But I must admit that most of my web searches center around food or recipes or ingredients. While searching for information about National Bundt Day last fall, I came across the blog of a baker who for several years challenged herself to bake a Bundt a day for the month leading up to that great day.  Can you even imagine! Thirty Bundts in 30 days! And she, in turn, led me to other bloggers who love Bundts through her National Bundt Day round ups. Sadly, she doesn’t seem to be blogging anymore but I hope that somehow, somewhere, she’s still baking.

The cake I am sharing with you today was a link in one of those round ups and that blogger, Tracey by name, doesn’t seem to be active any more either. In fact, I’d love to find out what happened to her because her very last post (and tweet) more than a year ago is the announcement that she finally got a blog design revamp. And that’s it. No more posts. No tweets. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Weird, right?

This glazed chocolate macaroon Bundt cake, however, is great consolation and fits our Bundt Bakers coconut theme perfectly, with coconut on the inside and coconut on the outside, so I hope Tracey doesn’t mind my sharing. She says on her post that the recipe is slightly adapted from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. I have no idea how slight is slightly because I don’t have the book and the only other post I could find with it didn’t give the amounts but just referred back to the book.

So here we go!

Ingredients
For the meringue filling and batter:
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon salt, divided
2 cups or 400g sugar, divided
1 tablespoon vanilla extract, divided
2 cups or 230g sweetened shredded coconut
2 cups or 250g plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup or 40g cocoa powder
3/4 cup or 180ml hot coffee
1/2 cup or 120ml sour cream
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup or 115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons canola oil

For the ganache:
1/2 cup or 120ml whipping cream
3 1/2 oz or 100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped (I just bang the chocolate bar around on the cabinet before I open it.)

More flaked coconut, for garnish, if desired

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup Bundt pan by greasing and flouring it or spraying it liberally with nonstick cooking spray for baking that has the flour in it already.

Crack your eggs and separate them, putting the whites in the bowl of your mixer and the yellows into two small bowls of two yolks each. You’ll use them two at a time later and this helps you keep the amounts correct in case a yolk breaks.



Add 1/2 teaspoon of the salt to the egg whites and use the whisk attachment to start beating them slowly. Gradually increase the speed until the egg whites can form soft peaks.

Then, with the mixer still running, gradually stream in 3/4 cup or 150g of the sugar and continue beating until the mixture reaches stiff peaks. Congratulations, you have made meringue!



Transfer 1 1/2 cups or 75g of this meringue to another bowl and fold in 1 teaspoon of the vanilla, the coconut, and 1 tablespoon of the flour – this is the filling for the cake.

Transfer the remaining meringue into another bowl and wash out your mixing bowl.

Whisk the cocoa powder, hot coffee, and sour cream together until smooth and lump free.


In a medium bowl, combine the remaining 2 cups of the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the remaining 1 1/4 cups or 250g of sugar, the butter, the oil, and the remaining 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Scrape down the sides occasionally and beat until the mixture turns pale yellow and is light and fluffy.

Add 2 of the egg yolks and beat until incorporated, then add the remaining 2 yolks, again beating until combined.

Second two, going in!


With the mixer on low, alternately add the dry ingredients in three additions and the coffee/cocoa mixture in three additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing just until combined.



Finally, fold in the extra meringue – not the filling! – until just combined.



Pour just slightly less than half of the batter to the prepared pan and spread in an even layer.

Use a spoon or scoop to transfer the coconut macaroon filling to the Bundt pan, making sure to keep it in the middle of the batter, never touching the sides of the pan.



Pour or scoop the rest of the batter on top of the coconut macaroon filling, making sure it’s completely covered.



Bake in your preheated oven for 45-50 minutes. Tracey says the toothpick should come out with just a few moist crumbs but I found that hard to check because of the filling.

When it’s done, take it out of the oven and put the pan on a wire rack to cool for about 15 minutes.



Gently turn the Bundt out onto the wire rack and allow it to cool completely before adding any ganache.



To make the ganache:
Warm your cream to just before boiling, either in a small pot or a microwavable bowl. Add in the dark chocolate and let it sit for a few minutes to allow the chocolate to melt.

Stir until the chocolate and cream are smooth and shiny and completely combined.

Allow to cool until your ganache is at your perfect pouring or drizzling consistency. It gets thicker and thicker as it cools. If it thickens too much, a quick zap in the microwave will loosen it back up.

Pour or drizzle over the cooled Bundt.



Sprinkle on more coconut to decorate, if desired.

Enjoy!


Many thanks to our host for this coconut Bundt Bakers challenge, Terri from Love and Confections! Check out the lovely long list of coconutty Bundts we have for you this month!






BundtBakers


#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme.  Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.




Posted by at 5:44:00 AM 0 comments
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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Strawberry Champagne Cocktail #BloggerCLUE


This twist on the classic peach Bellini uses strawberry simple syrup and strawberry puree to create a deliciously fresh Champagne cocktail, perfect for any celebration.

This month for Blogger C.L.U.E., my assigned blog is one that I am very familiar with and love. It is written by one of the most popular ladies on the interwebs because she is sweet, friendly, kind to a fault and makes the most sensational recipes. Despite all the deliciousness that comes out of her kitchen, she stays remarkably slim. Yep, my blog this month is That Skinny Chick Can Bake, written by my sweetheart of a friend, Liz.

Skinny Chick


Our theme is sparkles, so despite all the great recipes with shiny things, like her beautiful vanilla cupcakes sprinkled with silver balls or the glistening sheen of barbecue sauce on her Asian Baby Back Ribs, I had to go with the Strawberry Bellini Cocktail. Any excuse to open a bottle of bubbly, right?

Liz had been sent some simple syrups to use in cocktails when she made this originally and they looked great, but unfortunately I didn’t have any, so I made my own strawberry simple syrup from this recipe online, halving the ingredients. It was super easy and still made plenty! Or head on over to Liz’s post and check out the syrup she used. Also, Liz says this makes only two drinks but we had plenty enough strawberry puree for four or five drinks. That is to say, we drank the whole bottle of Champagne. Hey, we didn’t want it to get flat and go to waste, right?

Ingredients
7 oz or 200g ripe strawberries, stems removed (plus a few for garnish)
2 tablespoons strawberry simple syrup
Champagne

Method
Puree the strawberries in a blender with the simple syrup. Strain mixture. (I forgot this step so we were left with tiny little strawberries seeds at the bottom of our glasses. Not a big deal though.)


Put a couple tablespoons of puree in each glass.

Just look at that gorgeous red color!

Pour in some Champagne. It will bubble up so just wait till the bubbles subside and pour in a little more.



Stir to combine.


And then top up with more Champagne. Make sure to garnish each glass with a strawberry.


      CLUE logo
This Month’s Blogger CLUE Participants are

Find That Skinny Chick Can Bake online:

     




Posted by at 5:00:00 AM 0 comments
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