Helen's Chicken Stew with Dumplings

Today's lunch:

Lahmacun bread brushed with a mix of butter and olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt and topped with ingredients of choice:

• cherry tomatoes, fresh thyme, a sprinkling of Parmesan once out of oven
  
• roasted garlic, thyme and Parmesan
• goats cheese and thyme
• goats cheese, rosemary, cherry tomatoes and chutney
• salami and chorizo
• grated cheese
• roasted garlic and extra sea salt
  

Add any ingredients that take your fancy, making sure they can take 10 minutes in reasonably hot oven. These are also delicious for breakfast; you can add a tablespoon of sugar to the batter or not and/or topped with (after baking the buttered bread on it's own):

• Nutella and banana
• jam
• fruit coulis
• brown sugar mixed with cinnamon (bake this one in the oven)
• cream cheese and smoked salmon

The goats cheese and chutney was amazing!

Last night, we had chicken stew with dumplings, the quickest, easiest dinner which looks like you've been slaving over a hot stove for hours. We were so happy at dinner last night, sat round the table chatting away, eating up every last bit, pressing the baby potatoes and dumplings into the last of the gravy, finished off with steaming mugs of tea. After the Scotch broth for lunch, the comfort food had certainly done it's job.

Helen's Quick and Easy Chicken Stew with Dumplings

Place into a pan the following:
A half bag of baby potatoes (around 3-5 per person)
One onion, chopped large
A few shallots, whole or halved
A carrot, chopped large
2 garlic cloves
Some sprigs of fresh thyme and rosemary
Half a tin plum tomatoes or a few fresh tomatoes
Any other root veg you have in the house, chopped large

Add to this a pint or enough to cover of light chicken gravy, home made or granules mixed with chicken stock. If using fresh tomatoes, add a good squeeze of tomato puree to the gravy. Add a little dash of white wine if you happen to have some open. The teabag-looking item was a bouquet garni packet I had left so I popped it in for that little bit of extra aromatic flavouring.

Bring to the boil and drop in chunks of chicken breast or thigh meat; chicken breasts into four, thighs into two. Stir, put on the lid, boil once more and then simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Prepare dumplings by placing into a bowl the following:
100g/4oz self raising flour
2oz mature cheddar cheese
1oz Parmesan (if you don't want to use this, add another ounce of cheddar instead).
Quarter teaspoon baking powder
1 tsp mustard powder
Handful of either thyme or chopped parsley
Sprinkle salt and pepper

Mix and add a beaten egg and enough water to make a sticky dough. Don't mix too much, you want it lumpy. Form into little dumplings and pour over a little oil, rubbing gently to coat each ball. Place in fridge until five minutes before needed.

Put oven on to 200 degrees Celsius/gas mark 5.

Pour stew into an oven proof dish and top with dumplings. Bake in hot oven for around 15 minutes or until dumplings golden brown or a little darker on top, depending on taste.

The dumplings will expand and stick together which is just perfect; half are soaking up the gravy, the half sticking above the top are golden and crispy. Apply three greedy, hungry wee weans, one hungry big man and try to get to the table before they polish it off, leaving you a loan potato and a carrot.
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I've had several phone calls, emails and texts asking me how I am; it's lovely that my friends take the time to do that but I find myself saying "I'm fine" even though I still feel poorly. Is it a mum thing, a Scottish thing or a woman thing that after 7 days of illness, I feel frustrated with my inability to get better quickly and I feel like such a fraud. Come on, flu, go already!

I want to walk up a hill, go shopping and take the kids swimming desperately. It's their holiday week; not that they've complained, I don't think they can quite believe their luck what with the jammies on for as long as they want, mum on tap, vid games, computer and dvds galore. It's been a nice week, considering.

Tomorrow, we plan to hit the cinema to see 'Up'; I'm hoping my coughing has subsided by then as I really want to see it and can't if all I'll end up doing is disturbing everyone around me. Tomorrow is another day, I could leap out of bed, restored and well! Karmic thoughts, people, karmic thoughts.