Chicken and Dumplings

I don't know if there's any possible way to make dumpling photogenic, but man they taste good. This recipe by Melody Rhodes, and supplied by Google, has been foolproof so far. My only modification has been to half it to make it fit our miniature family better.

Ingredients

• 1 cup white flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 2 tbsp softened butter
  
• 1/2 cup milk
  

1. Bring 1 1/2 to 2 quarts of chicken soup to a simmer.
2. Mix the dry ingredients.
3. Mix the butter in with a fork.
4. Add the milk, but don't stir any more than necessary.
5. Drop spoonfuls of dough into the simmering chicken soup.
6. Cover for 10 minutes.
7. NO PEEKING!

Options: Double the recipe of course if you're feeding more than three people, and you might check out the variations on the original recipe for sweet dumplings or raisin dumplings.

Fairytale Pumpkin Soup

One day we threw some seeds out the kitchen window, and overnight (it seems) we had a pumpkin patch. It makes for a lovely view while washing dishes, and in a pinch fed us and two friends. Jami used the leftovers to make this soupy Thai dessert:

Ingredients

• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 water
• 1/4 of a pumpkin, peeled and cubed
• a pinch of salt
• brown sugar (or palm sugar if you can find it) to taste

1. Heat the coconut milk & water in a saucepan over low heat.
2. Add the pumpkin, salt & sugar.
3. Cook until the pumpkin is tender. Serves 4.

Jami's Minestrone

This is a simple minestrone that Jami makes. For the recipe she looked at several different ones online, and in books, figured out the basics, and went from there. She used to be a slave to recipes, but there are only two cookbooks in the house, one of them an exceptionally bad vegetarian cookbook. Thanks to those miserably bland recipes, she's taken to modifying them, and this minestrone is one of the results of that learning process.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup dry kidney beans
• 1 quart water
  
• 2 tbsp olive oil
  
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp oregano
  
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp rosemary
• 1 cup peeled and diced potatoes
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 2-3 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 1 quart vegetable stock
  
• 1 cup pasta shells
• 3/4 cup green beans, cut in 1 inch pieces
• salt and pepper to taste

Equipment

• you know, knives , pots, stuff like that

1. Begin soaking the beans in the morning, or the night before you plan on making the soup.
2. In a quart or so of water, boil the beans until soft, then strain and rinse.
3. Sauté onions and garlic in the olive oil.
4. Add the dry spices.
5. Add potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes and stir to coat with oil. These should be cut fairly small so that they cook quickly.
6. Add the vegetable stock and beans, and bring to a boil.
7. Salt and pepper as needed.
8. Add pasta and reduce heat to a simmer.
9. When pasta is cooked al dente, add the green beans. When the beans turn bright green, you're done.

Options: You might play around with different kinds of beans. Substituting 1/4 cup of red beans for garbanzos would be nice, they're just way expensive here, even dry. Minestrone, like much Italian food, is a great way use leftovers. You should use whatever ingredients are seasonally available. Zucchini and yellow squash would be great. Really, if you've been chopping vegetables for something else, and have a can of beans on hand, throw some in a pot with a quart of stock, and there you go. Don't be afraid to add meat (cooking it with the onions) if you like. Jami never cooks with meat because she hates to touch it when it's raw.

Minestrone means "big soup."

Chicken Soup

I started making my own chicken soup years ago in Spain as part of an installation called Un Lugar Donde Comer Sopa. We lived down the street from Valencia's historic Mercat Central, so we had ready access to the best ingredients in town. Back then I probably invented and forgot more dishes in a week than I do now in a year. My current chicken soup recipe is a direct descendant of those feet up top.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken
• enough water to cover
  
• 2 chopped onions
• 1 cup parsley, finely chopped
• 2/3 cup dried mushrooms (these should be a mild flavored mushroom, like field mushrooms, dried shitake would be way too strong)
• 1/4 cup dried tangerine peels
• 1 or 2 sticks of cinnamon
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• salt and pepper to taste

Equipment

• a large stock pot
• tongs
  

1. Clean and rinse the chicken well, and place it in the pot. Fill pot with enough to cover the chicken with an inch of water.
2. Bring water to a rolling boil.
3. Add the chopped onions, parsely, dried mushrooms, and oregano.
4. Tie the tangerine peels and cinnamon in a scrap of clean muslin and drop it in the pot.
5. Cover and let boil until the chicken's flesh begins to fall off the bones.
6. Fish out the spice packet and the chicken.
7. Transfer the chicken to a large plate and remove the bones and skin. Shred the meat with by hand and return it to the pot.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Options: This soup is great with homemade noodles or dumplings. You might try adding a couple of carrots or some celery. Peas might be good, too.

I recently made this soup with just a chicken, two onions, a handful of parsley and some thyme from the garden, and four or five cloves of garlic, smashed, skinned and roughly chopped. It went very well with dumplings.

Lentils with Pork

This is one of my made-up-on-the-spot dishes. I've made it twice, and it was pretty good. Jami likes it. The cat likes it. I'm sure the neighborhood dogs would like it, but I won't share.

Ingredients

• 1/4 to 1/2 pound very fatty pork cut into 1 inch cubes (try to get a strip of side or back, with the skin still on)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped
  
• 2-4 cloves garlic, minced (depending on the size of the cloves or your feelings about garlic)
• 1 or 2 plum tomatoes finely chopped (tomatoes add acidity to the dish, not much, but too much will kind of flatten the flavors)
• 1 quart vegetable stock
• 1 1/2 cups lentils
  
• 1 carrot, chopped
• a pinch or two of "Italian spices" (this is a packet of mystery herbs someone gave us), or fresh or dried thyme, oregano, and rosemary (but not too much, you want to taste the lentils, not the herbs)
• salt and pepper to taste
• some extra water (in case the liquids boil off too much)

Equipment

• a knife
• a cutting board
• a pot
• normal stuff

1. Heat the pot and add the olive oil.
2. Add the cubed pork and cook the heck out of it. Don't blacken it, but it should be crispy, and your kitchen should fill with smoke.
3. Turn the heat down and add the onions.
4. Once the onions begin to release some of their moisture add the minced garlic. This keeps the garlic from burning and becoming bitter. If you cook it slowly it'll add some sweetness.
5. Add the tomatoes and cook until they begin to fall apart.
6. Pour in the vegetable stock.
7. Add the lentils and chopped carrot.
8. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer until the lentils are cooked. About 30 minutes. Do not overcook the lentils. Check on them yourself, don't rely on a timer.
9. Add the herbs, salt, and pepper during the last ten minutes or so.
10. Add some of the extra water if you need to. This is supposed to be a lentil soupy-stewy sort of thing, not lentil gruel.

Options: This is great with polenta. It would probably be really really great with sausages cooked in beer or white wine. This serves four to six.

Oh. . . sausages.