Chicken in Cider with Sage and Dumplings
A very different Christmas Dinner. By Kate
This was never going to be a traditional Christmas, so it is only right that we should have eaten a very unconventional Christmas lunch.
Mind you, that was not by design. December is, thanks to the nature of the Green & Blue business, a month that is never in sharp focus. Everything happens in a kind of dizzy blur and you just have to hold on and hope for the best.
Abel & Cole did, I think, indicate on their website that no organic duck would be forthcoming on Tuesday the 21st but from the depths of the dizzy haze I did not really register that fact. It did come back to me (quite dramatically) on the morning of the 21st at which point I admitted defeat without a whimper. The idea of racing around London,
Jude was resigned to the absence of duck. There was a brief moment when he imagined that he might get up early on Thursday and go to the farmers market to find a duck but we both knew in our hearts that this was never going to happen. Neither him managing to get up in time, nor the presence of a spare duck, was ever a possibility.
Early Christmas Eve morning I managed to leave the shop to buy fresh sage and thyme at SMBS foods on Lordship Lane
By the time I remembered cider at about 6pm on Christmas Eve, all we had left was the Orchard Pig Medium Sweet. I think I would have preferred the dry or the Breton (which is dry too) but it was an interesting experiment.
Christmas morning, I was feeling confident and quite excited. I was going to try a new approach to dumplings which have long been a holy grail of mine and one I have never really uncovered before.
When I mention my dumplings to Jude, he always sighs quite deeply. Not in the content, happy way; more the sigh of a martyr who knows that he will pay painfully and dearly for his faith. In Jude’s case, his faith is in the power of food that is Intrinsically Bad For You. Anything heavy with bad fats, too much salt, cooked in even more fat with a side helping of fatty stodge is his ideal.
As my faith is in the power of foods that are Intrinsically Completely Life Affirming and Totally Healthy, you can see where the fault line lies.
He has had my dumplings before and pretty much completely hated them. They were made with wholemeal flour and coconut oil. Nothing Intrinsically Bad. What could there possibly be to love for a high priest of the other faith? I did want to try to square the circle, though. I was sure that if I did some clever things I could make dumplings that were light and fluffy enough, even for him.
So – phase one is gently frying onions in olive oil with lots of chopped sage and then adding the chicken pieces – wings and drumsticks – to brown. This smells really good. The sage was less perfumed than it is in the summer. I don’t know if this is a known phenomenon but it was definitely more savoury – not a bad thing. There was a kind of smoky aroma which worked really well with the applyness of the cider. The cider was poured over when the chicken looked sealed and then I put a lid on the roasting tray and popped it in the oven for 30 – 40 minutes.
The dumpling dough went into the fridge for about 40 minutes. I don’t know if you are supposed to do that with dumplings or not but it seemed to work :-
250g Wholemeal flour
Sift dry ingredients, rub in the solid coconut oil and then add the wet. Mix it briefly till it comes together and then in the fridge. Once out, knead very briefly and then tear off little bits and roll into balls. I must have ended up with between 20 and 30 of them and some were really too big. Next time, I will make sure that they are all no bigger than a medium sized cherry tomato.
I made a broth of the rest of the cider, the stalks of the sage, a few spoons of the chicken liquid and then 2 organic chicken stock cubes, each dissolved in 500ml hot water. When this was hot enough, I dropped in the first consignment of dumplings. They sank without trace.
After four anxious minutes they came bobbing jauntily to the surface, looking paler and yes, definitely quite yellow but somehow right. This was a great moment, I can tell you. I have never managed bobbing dumplings before.
The chicken was served with the dumplings, a bit of its cidery sauce (which was really good – still very apply but savoury and smoky from the sage too), a salad of raw brussel sprouts with goats cheese, toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds and a sprinkle of Chilli Flakes (Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall recipe. I think it was he who gave me the original idea for Chicken, Cider and dumplings as well).
Some of the dumplings were not cooked quite enough – next time, I must make sure to give them all at least 15 – 20 minutes. But most were quite delicious. The thyme came through beautifully and the texture was grainy for sure, but still, I thought, more than light enough. I ate a small mound of them soaked in sauce with the greatest of ease and pleasure.
Jude did not share my enthusiasm and as final Christmas lunches together go, this did not turn out well. I probably should have injected an element of Intrinsic Badness as it was his lunch too but then it was my final opportunity for possibly a long while to get some pure, unadulterated goodness down his gullet.
As the Dalai Lama apparently says, “ If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them”. My dumplings would not harm a fly and, for those that want to eat them, I actually firmly believe that they help enormously – both body and mind, especially on these freezing cold days. Completely delicious, life affirming, comfort food.
I have a bag in my freezer of the leftovers. They may not freeze well at all, but I will soon find out – I think there is another coldish snap coming next week.
This was never going to be a traditional Christmas, so it is only right that we should have eaten a very unconventional Christmas lunch.
Jude was resigned to the absence of duck. There was a brief moment when he imagined that he might get up early on Thursday and go to the farmers market to find a duck but we both knew in our hearts that this was never going to happen. Neither him managing to get up in time, nor the presence of a spare duck, was ever a possibility.
