Indulgent can be light!

It’s Tuesday and dinner is my turn. And yes, I DID end up with Rachael, but I didn’t leap to her immediately.

My Mom had emailed to tell me she saw local Watershed chef Scott Peacock on TV with Martha Stewart making chicken and dumplings. She said it looked delicious and was planning to try it, and I found myself greatly in the mood for chicken and dumplings the more I thought about it. I quickly found Scott’s recipe online and, while it made my mouth water like crazy, it was a little more involved (time-wise) than I prefer to tackle on a weeknight.

Unfortunately my appetite was now roaring for chicken and dumplings, so I headed on over to Food Network to find a good substitute. A quick “chicken and dumplings” recipe search found two top results by Emeril Lagasse. I skipped those because I routinely discount any Emeril recipe as worthless — he always calls for exotic ingredients and lots of my time, so I don’t even read through his recipes anymore. Plus his show is really annoying. BAM! However, the next chef with a 5-star chicken and dumpling rating was Miss Rachael. I checked it and it instantly looked like a winner, plus it was full of vegetables and carried no cream or milk or anything heavy! Now don’t get me wrong. I adore heavy. I looooooove heavy and rich meals. However, I’ve found that on weeknights I prefer to eat healthily…otherwise I find it harder to sleep. So recipes like this one really appeal to me.

This was a pretty easy meal with lots of fresh and fun things in it that was actually fun to prepare. CHEF’S TIP: I find the cooking process so much more enjoyable if I do all my chopping and prepping before cooking a single thing. If I chop and prep as I cook I end up a frazzled, exhausted mess, trying to keep everything going without burning anything, etc. However, if I take a few minutes, or several minutes, before starting the actual cooking process to do ALL of my chopping and prepping I find the actual cooking far less rushed and far more enjoyable. Then I can just enjoy an adult beverage while I leisurely toss pre-prepped ingredients together!

This recipe called for potatoes, carrots and celery in with the chicken and dumplings, which I loved. Devin and I both adore celery so I doubled the amount of celery the recipe called for. Otherwise I really didn’t touch a thing, although I did have to add a little bit of chicken stock prematurely to keep the veggies from burning/sticking to the bottom of the pan. Oh, and I actually did not put in any salt or pepper because our poultry seasoning includes salt and pepper and we found the dish entirely satisfactory with just that.

I was skeptical about the dumplings, which were made from biscuit mix (I chose Martha White’s Extra Rich Buttermilk, but then mixed it with water instead of milk) and fresh chopped flat leaf parsley. The recipe calls for them to steam in the pot with all the other ingredients on medium-low heat for 8 minutes or so. I was afraid it would be gooey and yucky but the dumplings turned out great!

I served the final dish with some simple fresh steamed broccoli.

While it is difficult to photograph a dish like this without making it look like goop, trust me when I say it turned out quite nicely, and was bursting with fresh veggies, tender chicken and tasty dumplings! It’s the type of dish that you can eat far too much of without even realizing it, because it’s that light and delicious.

Highly recommended.

- Nate