Chicken and Dumplings

With the kids back to school and Autumn fast approaching slow cooked stews and roasts are officially in season. On Sundays is when I have the time to make a dinner that requires time to reach perfection.Chicken and Dumplings is one of those Sunday Meals that excites the entire family as soon as the chickens hit the oven. It’s classic slow cooked family comfort food that permeates the house with fine aromas through the day heightening the olfactory senses and creating the type of anticipation that only adds to the finally of dinner time.

This is a meal I will start very early in the morning so I can execute every step perfectly while multitasking through the day resulting with a perfect conclusion.

Start with two 5 lb chickens seasoned on all sides with plenty of salt, pepper and garlic and roast them at 350 for 1 1/2 hours

While they roast cut 2 lbs carrots, 4 stalks celery and two large onions into 1 inch chunks and saute them to a medium brown and set aside.

When the Chickens are cooked place them in separate pots and put just enough water in the pots to cover them with an inch of water.

Bring them to a boil and turn down the flame so they can simmer for an hour.

Remove the chickens from the pots and allow to cool slightly so you can pull the meat off the bones placing the meat from the chickens in their respective pots, discard the bones and divide the vegetables between the two pots, season with salt, pepper, oregano, sage rosemary and basil. Bring it back to a simmer and thicken with roux to a smooth velvety consistency. ( If you don’t know how to make roux it’s actually quit simple and I am going to walk you through it. Start with two sticks of butter and half cup of flour. Melt the butter in a small sauce pan and add the flour stirring constantly, adjust the roux to a thick paste and cook over a medium flame stirring even still until blond in color. This only takes a few minutes. turn of the flame and divide between the two simmering pots stirring it in to assure there will be no lumps)

When the gravy has incorporated make your own dumplings with

1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup oil
3/4 cup water
2 small eggs
3 cups flour

In a large bowl, mix together the salt, oil, water, and eggs. Slowly add the flour to the mixture, blending it constantly with a fork. Stir only long enough to mix the dough.

Or to make it easy grab a box of Bisquick and follow the recipe for dumplings on the side of the box. These will set up in about 10 minutes and you will have a wonderful meal with your loved ones.

Stuffed Pizza with Meatballs and Italian Sausage

At Home we often make Pizza in many creative ways, I like to get the kids involved in both the creative process and assembling the Pizza. I make the dough from scratch hours ahead of time kneading it by hand (I don’t have one of those fancy bread machines or Cuisine Arts) and letting it rise for two hours, punching it down and forming the dough balls and allowing those to rise another 2 hours. However store bought dough will do just fine, I recommend the second proof before using it.

Sunday morning after finishing up our Blueberry Pancakes with softened butter and syrup that’s so sticky sweet the plates needs to be run under hot water before going to the dishwasher my daughter and I began bouncing ideas around about what kind of pizza we would have for lunch before we headed off to a late afternoon family gathering. She wanted a mac and cheese pizza which sounds  yummy but the only option available was making the boxed stuff to put it together and that quickly was ruled out. Another favorite is BBQ Chicken Pizza using Sweet Baby Rays for the base, adding thinly sliced onions, topping it with sharp cheddar and roasted chicken which I usually keep on hand in the freezer. But it was time for something new. A pizza so unique we could call it our own. We then remembered our all time favorite meal we had the night before. That was it!  Ana quickly opened the door to the refrigerator with great enthusiasm, quickly pulled out the Meatballs and Sausage and said “this will make an incredible pizza daddy”. And it was final!

I got to work on the dough and she began shredding the block mozzarella cheese that was so soft   it deformed in her hand as she pushed it through the grates. After kneading the dough, proofing it, forming into 2 balls and proofing another two hours we were ready to get started on our wonderful creation.

I stretched the dough using my thick wooden dowel style rolling pin into two 14 inch rounds. I then laid down the sausage and meatballs after chopping them into large bite-able pieces. Ana topped that with about a pound of whole milk mozzarella and I put the top of the crust on rolling up the sides to assure it would be air tight and would not leak. After topping that with lots of Parmesan Cheese I cut some small holes on the top so it could breath while it cooked and we put it in the oven.

Hot out of the oven

After much anticipation and beautiful aromas permeating the air like Sunday dinner at Gram-mas house it was time to take it out of the oven. We needed to let it rest for 10 minutes so I guarded the kitchen like watchman on duty to assure no one would be overly tempted by the  thick and crispy crust and perfectly toasted Parmesan cheese.

Slice of Meatball and Italian Sausage Stuffed Pizza

Finally it was time to eat and not one of the eight pieces I cut it into lasted more than 10 minutes between the four of us. To our delight it was worth all of the anticipation and a we all agreed was a new favorite.