Chicklin and Dumplins

When I was a wee lass I had the habit of not pronouncing words correctly. I suppose you could chalk it up to baby talk. One of the things I used to love to eat and still consider a top comfort food choice was Chicklin and Dumplins.

Yesterday was grey and I was chained to my laptop. I emailed the better-half and suggested that we do two fun things last night (yes, he was sitting in the next room but I still emailed him). One was to have a fire in the fireplace and the other was to make Chicklin and Dumplins. He was game. We consulted a few recipes on how to make the chicken soup portion of the dish and ultimately I sauteed onions, garlic, carrots, celery, tiny turnips from our garden, and a potato. The better-half chopped up a chicken breast, dipped it into flour and cooked it in a sauce pan. Then he put all that chickeny goodness into my pot (that sounds sort of dirty doesn’t it). He used some wine to deglaze the pan and then cooked it for awhile to make a rich gravy which he also put into my pot. To all of this we added boxed chicken broth, some of our homemade broth from the freezer and topped it all off with some tap water. We needed plenty of broth to cook those dumplings.

Then we consulted James Beard for the dumpling recipe and I have to tell you the chicklin and dumplin was amazing. I’ve just finished my paper and as I haven’t eaten since breakfast, I’m headed downstairs to eat the leftovers. I’m not sure what excites me more knowing the paper is complete or what I’m about to eat.