On Food: Chicken and dumplings.

Like many people, I love to eat and I even love to cook. However, again like many people reading this blog, I don’t have a lot of time to devote to cooking. I’m on my feet all day at work chasing the injured and elderly, I get home late and the last thing I want to do is spend an hour cooking. If a meal takes more than 30 minutes from start to finish, forget it, I’m only making it occasionally on the weekends (though this is not the case with baking, which is really only for special occasions anyway). As such, my boyfriend has dubbed me “the lazy chef” and I’m okay with that.

One of the greatest things I have found, as a lazy chef, is Martha Stewart’s “Everyday Food” magazine. My subscription was a gift from two friends, Donna and her mother, Ethel, for my birthday after I got my first apartment in grad school. Donna and Ethel have continued to renew my subscription since 2005 and I’m very grateful for it! My favorite thing about the magazine is that it is ideal for busy people who don’t have the time to cook elaborate Sunday dinners every night, hence the name “Everyday Food.” Most of the recipes take 30-45 minutes, they sometimes throw in a longer one for “the weekend chef.” Everything is made from scratch (well, more or less; Martha doesn’t expect you to make your own pasta for every meal). The magazine features seasonal ingredients, so it is easy and cheap for most people to find everything at the local grocery store.

Since my boyfriend decided to pamper me and cook every meal for me two weekends ago, I decided last Friday to cook “chicken and dumplings” from the October issue of “Everyday Food” for him. Most of the ingredients he had already and are things most people have in their cupboard or fridge (unsalted butter, all purpose flour, baking powder and chicken broth). I also knew he had celery and parsley from the recipe he cooked for me the weekend before and I had carrots at home. So all I had to buy from the grocery store was chicken, 1/3 lb. of green beans, and a yellow onion. My total bill was exactly $8 (and that’s considering I spent WAY too much on chicken because I went to Whole Foods).

The recipe calls for already cooked and cubed chicken (presumably left overs), but we didn’t have any left over chicken, so I just threw some salt and pepper on 3 decent sized chicken cutlets in a frying pan with some olive oil, cooked them up, let them cool off, and cubed them as best I could.

After that I sautéed the onions, celery, and carrots in some butter, added flour, chicken broth, let it boil and added the chicken and green beans and let it cook a little more and added dollops of dumpling dough. I won’t go into full detail, but here is a link to the recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/933520/chicken-and-dumplings or better yet, you could go to the grocery store or book store and buy the October issue of “Everyday Food.”

Now here is where some step by step photos or even video would be great, but alas, the “lazy chef” is also the forgetful chef and I forgot to ask my boyfriend to take pictures until the meal was practically cooked. That said, the meal was delicious! When my boyfriend saw me making the dumplings he said “that’s dough. You’re making dough. ” My boyfriend actually enjoys making home-made bread, without even using a bread maker), so he was shocked to see me cooking something that took “more than 3 seconds” to make. While a dumpling is technically “dough,” and does take more than 3 seconds to make, it’s actually really easy, only requires about 4 ingredients, and you don’t have to break out the Kitchen Aid mixer to do it!

The meal took about 45 minutes from start to finish, maybe a little longer since I had to make the chicken too, but it was a delicious, healthy meal (273 calories; 12 grams of fat; 15 grams of protein;27 grams of carbs), that was simple enough to cook on a weekday, but tasted like Fall comfort food tat took all day to make!