Chicken and Dumplings

A favorite recipe of my daughter, this chicken and dumplings recipe is perfect for the crockpot . Make sure to use a stewing chicken - if you can't find one at your grocery store, use a couple cans of chicken broth instead of water. Frying chicken just doesn't make a flavorful chicken stock. It's hard to find stewing chickens these days. Locally, Sparrow Meat Market in Kerrytown has them, as well as Hillier's Market. This year, I have ordered some stewing chickens from Back Forty Acres when I visited the Chelsea Farmers Market a few weeks ago. I asked the gal behind the table if her stewing chicken had a lot of flavor, and she said "absolutely the best" so I signed up for 5. I took her at her word because she was wearing a sash that read Homemaker of the Year and a rhinestone tiara. (it was the day of the Chelsea Fair Parade - I am sure this isn't her usual farmer's market getup). It's going to be a great fall!

Chicken and Dumplings

3 lb. stewing chicken, cut up

2 medium onions, peeled and cut in half

3 stalks celery

3 carrots, peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks

3 parsnips, peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks

1 t poultry seasoning

1 t kosher salt

1/2 t fresh ground pepper

2 bay leaves

3 1/2 c water, divided

1/4 c flour

For the dumplings

3/4 c flour

1 tsp. baking powder

pinch salt

1 T. snipped parsley

1/2 t dried thyme or dill

1/4 c milk

2 tsp vegetable oil

Put vegetables in the bottom of a large crock pot (or dutch oven in you are camping), and place chicken on top of vegetables. Add seasonings and 3 c. water and cover, cook on low for at least 8 hours. Remove chicken from pot and turn crock pot on high. Remove chicken from bones and return to the pot. Mix 1/2 c. water with 1/4 c. flour and stir in broth to thicken and cover.

Make dumplings by mixing dry ingredients and herbs in a small bowl. Mix milk and oil and add to dry ingredients and stir with a fork until combined. Drop by spoonfuls on top of chicken stew - make about 4-6 dumplings, and cover and cook for 15 minutes in crock pot on high. Do not remove lid to check for doneness until 15 minutes have elapsed. Check with a toothpick and see if the dumplings are done after 15 minutes; if not, cook 5 minutes longer with the lid on.

Spiedies

I spent last weekend in Vestal, NY at my good friend Ann's alpaca farm and I got to eat the famous local dish of Central New York, the spiedie. A spiedie is basically marinated meat on a stick, and it doesn't taste like shish kebab. Every restaurant has their own variation on the menu, and they are traditionally served on bread or a hot dog bun. I enjoyed eating chicken ones from the Spiedie and Rib Pit as well as the Skylark Diner, and on past trips I have sampled the pork and lamb ones and I love them all.

Ann says that when she makes them at home, she uses Salamida's State Fair Original Spiedie Sauce and since I haven't found it in Michigan, I set out to make mine from scratch. After much online research, I probably found 20 different spiedie sauce recipes, so I borrowed some ideas from each and made up my own recipe. The trick to making spiedies is to marinate the meat for at least 3 days before you put them on skewers to grill. This recipe can be used to marinate up to 3 lbs. of the meat or poultry of your choice.

Spiedie Sauce

8 bay leaves, crumbled into small pieces

4 t. oregano

8 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 c.up distilled white vinegar

1 tsp. pepper

3 tsp. salt

Mix marinade in a plastic bag and add meat or poultry of your choice cut into 1 - 2" square cubes. Marinate in the fridge for at least 3 days, turning the bag over 2x a day at least. Skewer meat and grill until cooked through. Remove skewers and serve on hot dog buns or white bread. Also, spiedies are great on salads!

Upper Peninsula Style Pasty

If Michigan ever declared a state food, what would it be? Cherries? Morels? Coney Dogs? Vernors? Pasties would be in the running. A pasty (rhymes with "nasty", but it definitely isn't) is like a beef pot pie, and you can buy them all over the place in the U.P. Yoopers usually eat them with ketchup, but I like mine with beef gravy or mustard on them. They are a wonderful filling meal for fall and winter. Labor intensive to make; I suggest you get together with a friend and make and freeze a batch. My friend Alison and I do so every November. We did just that yesterday - we started at about 10 am and were finished making a total of 52 pasties for the freezer by 3 pm. We rewarded ourselves with some Oxbow Hard Cider.

If you have pie crust phobia, you can get over it by making pasties. Pasty making is great for people that need "Pie Crust Rehab". The crust is very forgiving, and soon you will get used to what the right texture of crust should be with your hands. Too much or too little water, and you'll have trouble rolling them out. You'll get the hang of it because you will roll out many in the course of making pasties.

Even if you hate rutabagas, they are not optional in a pasty. Don't skip them - they will not turn out tasty if you skip them. You can dice all the vegetables and cut up the meat yourself, but it takes a long time to do so. If I am making 50 pasties, I use a food processor to cut the veggies. In the interest of time, I asked my favorite butcher Bob Sparrow to cut the meat for me. He was able to cut all the meat in 5 minutes - it would have taken me an hour. He also suggested sirloin tip instead of the usual round steak and his suggestion was a great improvement. This year was our best tasting pasties ever!

Pasties are traditionally eaten on Wednesday nights in the U.P. I'm not sure why....downstate, Wednesday was "Prince Spaghetti Night". Any Detroiters remember that?

This recipe makes about 15 pasties - Alison and I usually triple it.

U. P. Style Pasties

printer friendly

Crust
7 c. flour
3 tsp. salt
2 c. shortening
cold water

Mix flour and salt together, and cut in shortening until the mixture is pea sized. Add cold water slowly (about a cup) until the dough can stick together to form into a ball. Form into 15 balls about two inches in diameter. The goal is to roll out each pasty crust so it's about 8 inches in diameter.

To roll it out, put a liberal amount of flour on the counter top. and flour your rolling pin. Smash the ball into a hockey puck shape, working it with your hands to avoid creating any cracks in it. Gently roll it out. After every couple rolls with the pin, flip the crust over, adding a little flour if it is needed. If you have trouble flipping it over because it sticks, you're adding too much water during the mixing of the dough. Don't worry; just work some more flour into it. On the other hand, if it is cracking up when you try to flip it, it's too dry and you should try to work a little more water into it. The perfect crust will just be on the verge of cracking, but won't actually crack if you handle it gently. That is the key to good pie crust....to just be on the verge of cracking.

Don't worry if you have to rework the pasty dough - it's not critical that it's tender like it would be if you were making a pie. The same roll out technique I've described here will work for a pie crust, too. Pretty soon, you will know by touch if you have too much water or too little. After the first couple pasties, you will be a pie crust pro! Look out Martha Stewart! You can make pie for Thanksgiving everyone will love.

Pasty Filling
1 1/2 lb. sirloin tip trimmed and cut into 1/2 inch size cubes
1/2 lb. ground pork
Half of a large rutabaga, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch sticks and stood up in the feed tube of your food processor and sliced using the thickest slicing blade you have - the thicker the better.
1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced in your food processor like the 'baga
1 large onion, cut in quarters and sliced as aforementioned vegetables
7 medium potatoes, diced
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
10 pats of butter

Mix all the ingredients together except the butter. Fill each pastry with a handful of filling, and top with a pat of butter. Fold over to form a pocket. Pinch closed and use a sharp knife to cut a couple vents in the top. On a parchment covered cookie sheet or jelly roll pan, bake in a 400 F oven for 30 minutes if you are planning on freezing them, 1 hour if you are planning on eating them now. If you freeze them, I generally thaw them out and heat them up for 30 minutes at 350 F.

No Child Left Behind Breakfast

Don't get me started on standardized testing. I really can't stand that our school has to spend the first two months each year on prepping or taking MEAP testing (Michigan Educational Assessment Program). Note to self: add MEAP to my "Thank you George Bush" list, along with the Iraq War, the decline of the auto industry, the depression we are now in, etc. Okay, I'll stop whining now.

Standardized testing has been around a long time - I can remember taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in the 1970s when I was a kid, but there was less riding on it than there is now. I wonder why the Iowa test is the one we took? Didn't Michigan have its own test? Why was Iowa's so good, anyway? I recall that it was mind numbingly boring. When you reached the end of the test section was a STOP SIGN, and we were warned not to go past it. When we reached it, we were to close our books and put our heads down.

I didn't know then that I was what we would now call "academically gifted". My mother kept my IQ score from me until I was an adult, because she was afraid of putting too much pressure on me. Having a kid that was smart worried her - she thought she'd mess it up somehow. One of the curses of being smart is that I would often reach the STOP SIGN way before everyone else in the class. I can distinctly remember having to put my head down for 45 minutes during one of the Iowa tests - I was done 45 minutes early. That's a long time for a 5th grader to sit still and be quiet. As a result, I'd try to take the test as slowly as possible. It was hard to drag my feet on the math parts, because math was especially dull to me in grade school.

I hated taking the Iowa Test, but it was really prep for a lifetime of standardized tests - later on would come the PSAT, the ACT, the GRE and the GMAT for me. I'm fortunate to be one of those people that do really well on standardized tests. My scores on these tests never matched my grades, which often made teachers and professors proclaim that I wasn't giving school my best effort. My problem with school isn't my intellect, it's that I'm am "OP" - an optimist procrastinator. I often think things will take a shorter time than they actually do, so I put it off until the last minute. I run out of time.

These days, the MEAP tests are treated with much more pomp and circumstance. Kids are supposed to bring in mint gum to chew to relieve stress. There are nutritious snacks served, and parents are supposed to prepare high protein breakfasts. This is difficult for an OP like me. I never have enough time to whip up a fabulous protein laden breakfast in the morning, even though I have the best intentions. So here's a great breakfast idea for the OP's out there.

Breakfast Casserole

Base recipe

12 slices bread
1 lb shredded cheese (for ours I used cheddar for the meat ones and Mexican for the vegetarian ones)
8 eggs
1 ½ c. milk
1 ¼ T. Worcestershire sauce
Filling of your choice (1 lb. pork breakfast sausage or bacon or ham, cooked) or vegetarian*
1 stick butter

Place 6 slices of bread in a 13X9 pan. Top with filling of your choice, cheese and another layer of bread. Mix eggs, milk and Worcestershire sauce with a whisk until blended and pour over top. Cut butter into 12 pats and dot the top with it. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, bake for 1 hour at 350F or until the eggs are cooked through in the center.

Vegetarian Filling
3 green peppers, chopped medium
3 onions, chopped medium
6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 T. vegetable oil
3 small cans sliced mushrooms, drained
1 can petite diced tomatoes, drained

Saute peppers, onions in vegetable oil until they are soft, and then add the garlic and sauté for a couple more minutes. Add tomatoes and mushrooms and stir.

When you are done prepping this casserole the night before, you've reached the STOP SIGN. Put your head down. As an adult, this feels really good. Come tomorrow, you can start again. But for now, put your head down and wait for the rest of the class to finish.

Seafood packets

I got this recipe originally from Everyday Food, but I modified it a bit. This is a terrific easy dinner item - in fact, you can make them the night before and put the packets in the fridge and throw them on the grill when you get home.


Serves 4.
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons dried dill - if it is summer and you have some, fresh dill is nice
4 small garlic cloves, minced
Coarse salt and ground pepper
8 ounces red new potatoes, scrubbed and thinly sliced
1 pound skinless fish fillet, cut into four equal pieces (cod is good, tonight I am using sole)
8 ounces frozen uncooked medium shrimp (peeled and deveined), thawed
1 lemon, thinly sliced

Directions
Heat grill to medium. Fold four 14-inch squares of heavy-duty aluminum foil in half, forming 4 rectangles. Assemble packets: On one half of each of four folded pieces of heavy-duty foil, dividing ingredients evenly, arrange potatoes in a single layer; top with cod, then shrimp. If it is summer and you have some around, you could throw in a couple of 1 inch pieces of corn on the cob on the side. Add a dollop of the butter, sprinkle with garlic, dill, salt and pepper and two lemon slices. Fold foil over ingredients, and crimp edges tightly to seal.

Place packets on grill, with potato layer on the bottom. Cook, rotating the packets around on the grill (don't flip them) occasionally, until fish is just cooked through and potatoes are tender, 12 to 14 minutes.