Chicken & Dumplings

When I was a child on up through adulthood, I detested the very thought of turnips unless they were eaten raw, and even that, was rare that I’d ever want one on my palette.  I ate raw turnips when I was little, watched my mother and father eat them in a casserole while eeking at the smell of them cooking throughout the house.  They were deemed, in my book, as the only vegetable I would not, could not like– cooked.  Funny how things change when you become an older adult, then you find that you like what your parents liked all along.  Perhaps it’s in the way that certain foods are cooked, what they are cooked with, what foods are teamed up with– those “yucky” foods that can be made into almost if not as good tasting as the others.  Turnips desire to have chicken broth saturating them, soaking up delicious meat flavor while cooking, in order to be mellowed out a bit instead of giving them the full advantage of becoming too powerful that turns off the senses.  So are so healthy for us, another kind of root vegetable, which are said to be the healthiest of veggies besides the kale and spinach.  So why not give turnips a try in the right way and discover that they aren’t so bad, afterall.  I’m glad I did and I’m glad they turned out to be a friend, not a foe.  Along with other good wholesome, healthy foods, these will keep us young longer, happily living fully– longer; so why not enjoy the flavor along the way.  Why not love the taste, the individual quality of each kind of root vegetable, or any kind of vegetable, for that matter. 

As there are favorite vegetables, there are certain meals or dishes among the favorites that your mom used to make, used to cook at home when you were growing up.  Everyone’s got them, their choice of their favorite things mom used to fix for them.  Isn’t it a fact that everything we do, have, say or think is centered around a woman, even if indirectly, and that woman would be– mom.  The saying that the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world could never be more true.  We take our memories of home and of our moms with us and do with those memories however way we interrupt them to be and however lovely those memories are to us.  When my siblings and I were growing up, when all five of us were still kids at home, we could each agree on the best things our mom made for us.  That list would be her baked macaroni and cheese, her bread pudding, her fried chicken, and her chicken and dumplings.  We would run to the table, fuss over who got what color of rimmed plates– burgandy, yellow, blue or whatever, lick our plates so no one would want our germs, to keep the color of plate on the table before us, the chosen color that each child thought was a necessary thing to fuss over, as children do such things like that…  Then we would flip forks, be as noisy as we possibly could be.  My brothers were the most obnoxious among the bunch, I can truly say, laughing and giggling, making all those gross boy sounds that moms and sisters wish they would not make.  Those are to be the happiest times you have as a child, with your siblings; and they were for me.  Those were the times in summer with my three older brothers.  Then when my baby sister arrived, among the list of favorite foods our mom made, added were her assortment of pies, yeast breads and rolls, stuffed zucchini squash, kettle cooked beef with mashed potatoes and the venison meals that she would cook, among other foods that are held dear in memory to her and to the times we were all together around a table.  Certain meals stand out among the rest.

She cooked the same recipe that her mother would make, for chicken and dumplings, there being a variation.  Sometimes, she’d have the noodles all over the table in flour, cutting them into strips; then there were times when she’d cook the dough into lumps of moist fluffy bread on top of the chicken stock and vegetables with chunks of chicken, such as, stew.  I never made those dumplings all these years, another one of her dishes that I could not duplicate, so I thought.  I may have tried it once, was not happy with the outcome of my own attempt to have her very chicken and dumplings, so I put the idea to rest until this time when I saw that Lucinda Scala Quinn had  a close enough version of my mother’s chicken and dumplings, same as my grandma’s, having slight differences, but mainly the same.  I cooked them for my family and savoured the memory while I was cooking this dish for my own children, constantly running into the kitchen asking when supper was going to be ready.  Don’t run your kids out of the kitchen, moms; for them, that is an open door to your heart to them.  I’ve done it at times, my mom has, and every mom has on occasion when kids came in to pick at the food before it was ready, or fussed at us for not having it on the table just yet or simply made a humongous mess– like flour making a path across the kitchen floor from the living room to the counter and over to the sink.  Let them come into the kitchen, let the messes be.  Those messes become memories, and they can be good ones to keep forever.  I practically lived in the kitchen when I was  growing up beside my mother.  She gave me something, a tool, that I could have and use in order to be a mother to my own children.  That certainly was not an impairment, was not a hindrance.  I ran outdoors, breathed air but I was always back in the kitchen to gather what I needed to learn, had to know for when I was older with little ones of my own.  Everything is around the table, around mom, around her food…

In this dish that is enough for a meal, I added into the recipe mustard seed, black pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper, a bay leaf, thyme, and lentils.  And I’ve learned from my mother to put tumeric in anything chicken broth-wise.  It gives it that nice yellow color, making it more appealing; just a little does it, however.  So here is my recipe, the drop-dough kind of dumplings: