The Chicken Dumplin' Gang

I got friends who won't cook chicken on the bone.  They say things like "It's easier being a carnivore when I don't know it has bones."  Some friends just don't like handling meat that looks as if once it was alive.  I personally will never forget the time I was in the backyard at my Granny's house and my Uncle came up to kill us a chicken to cook for dinner.  He just grabbed it by the head and in a few seconds the head was gone and the chicken's body was running around.  Once it stopped they gave me the chicken with instructions on defeathering and cleaning the meat to prepare it for baking.  For sure and I would not lie about this:  I cried for that poor chicken's soul for a solid hour-- until the meal was served and I tasted its gift to us.  I knew that chicken PERSONALLY.

But one of my all time favorite chicken dishes is chicken n dumplings.  To make chicken n dumplings you have three main things to do.  First you cook the chicken and remove the cooked meat from the bones.  Next, prepare and cook the dumplings.  Finally thicken the gruel.  Sides to serve with chicken and dumplings are rolls, green beans, mashed potatoes.  I've seen it served with macaroni and cheese, scalloped turnips and sweet potato casserole.

Preparation Time: 45 minutes
Start to finish: 2.75 hours
Yield: 6 servings

For the chicken and gruel:
7 cups water
1 chicken cut into pieces
1 tablespoon chicken bouillon grains
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

For dumplins:
21/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup melted chicken fat or shortening
1/2 cup chicken stock, pot likker, or water.
Combine 2 cups of the flour with the salt and stir in the shortening.  Add the stock and mix until you have a stiff dough.  Knead for 30 strokes or until stiff.  Working on a floured surface and using a rolling pin, roll the dough to a thickness of 1/8 to 1/4 inch, as if making a piecrust.  Use a pizza cutter to cute 1 inch by 2 inch strips.  Dry the surface of the dumplins by adding flour.  Slip the dumplings, one at a time, into a large pot of simmering broth.  Stir to keep the dumplings separated.  Cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for 15 minutes.  Remove from the heat, cover the pan and cool 30 to 60 minutes.  This resting time helps to thicken the gruel and tenderize the dumplings.  Reheat before serving.  The longer dumplings sit after cooking the more tender they are and they will keep for several days. 

Step 1: Several hours or the day before cooking the dumplings, combine the water, chicken, bouillon, salt, and pepper in a large saucepan and simmer 40 minutes or until chicken is cooked.  cover and refrigerate.
Step 2: When the chicken and broth have compeltely cooled, remove and discard the fat from the top of the gruel.  Take the chicken out of the gruel and separate and discard the bones and skin.  Set aside and cover.
Step 3: Bring the gruel back to a low boil and prepare the dumplings.

Step 4: In a small bowl prepare a cold roux by slowly whisking the 1/2 cup water into the 1/2 cup flour.  One-third at a time, pour this cold roux into the simmering dumplings.  Return the prepared chicken to the pot, bring to a boil, and remove from the heat.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

There's so much talk these days about the benefits of sweet potatoes in your diet.  There's also so much talk today about how carbs are terrible for you.  Here is a recipe I ran across and enjoyed over the weekend.  It is a classic mountain recipe and contry to its very core.  The recipe is simple and if you do as most mountain cooks and use self-rising flour, you can make these biscuits with three ingredients:  butter, 1 cup of sweet potato casserole, and self-rising flour.  The biscuit is a treasure amongst biscuits and potatoes.  You will want to serve them as I did with fresh butter and linn (basswood) or sourwood honey will do for breakfast, dinner, or supper. 

You can make them with 1 cup of leftover sweet potato casserole.  They take about 15 minutes. 

Sweet potato casserole:
1 cup cooked mashed sweet potatoes
1 tablesppon brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

For the biscuits:
3 tablespoons butter plus 1/4 cup butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teasponns baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sweet potato casserole

Step 1:
If preparing the sweet potato casserole, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, brown sugar, butter, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon (my husband doesn't like cinnamon, so I leave this part out)
Step 2:
Preheat the overn to 400 degrees F and melt 3 tablespoon of butter in an 8 X 8 inch baking tin.
Step 3:
Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Using a pastry blender, cut the 1/4 cup butter and then the sweet potato into the flour mixture.  On a floured surface, knead the dough.  Pat out to 1/2 to 3/4 inch thickness and cut into 2 inch round biscuits.  Place the biscuits in the baking pan with the butter.
Step 4:
Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until brown on the edges.  To check for doneness, break a biscuit open an dsee that the dough is cooked in the center-- not wet and doughy.  Broil 1 minute to brown the tops.

As a healthy alternative, you can omit the 3 tablespoons of butter from the pan.  Dust the pan or bottom of biscuits with flour.  If you are concerned about saturated fats, replace the 1/4 cup butter with canola oil.  Cut the salt.

Whatever Happened to the Fried Apple?

I have never met a fried apple I didn't like.  Here in the Appalachian mountains we have the amazing benefit of delicious apples.  This season has been particularly good-- perfect climate for this food that purports to your eating one per day keeping the doctor away.

Even though Fall is a great time for getting apples, the best apples to cook with are June apples.  These apples are picked green and their sourness adds to the perfect flavor of fried apple.  The types of apples we love around these parts are the following, but not limited to Granny Smiths, Winesaps, Macintoshes, Jonathans and Rome Beauties.

Fried apples are eaten as a side dish as a vegetable.  This is where the Yankees get it all mixed up.  They are not dipped in butter and fried in a pan.  Fried apples are not candied or glazed.  You don't want to caramelize the apples or slow cook them.  They are, for lack of a better term, braised.  Most cooks fry their apples at low heat on top of the stove in a covered cast-iron skillet.  Cooking the apples covered releases moisture, steams them, and melts the sugar.  Because apples release liquid after they start to cook, many cook them covered first and then uncovered.  Covered cooking draws moisture while uncovered cooking evaporates it, and for fried apples both steps enhance the dish.

Adorn, Not Scorn, the Biscuit!

Lord knows I have eaten my share of biscuits: buttermilk biscuits, canned biscuits, biscuits twice fried in a pan with honey and butter, gravy biscuits, ham biscuits, jelly biscuits, plain old butter biscuits-- there are as many biscuits to love nearly as folks to eat them.

But I'm a modern mountain woman and with all of this Atkins, low carb, paleo hot mess that is permeating our culture, the biscuit has taken a sort of back seat to things like, oh, a lightly cooked lean steak.  But back in the earlier part of last century, the biscuit (and cornbread too, but that's for another day) was a staple-- the biscuit powered the men and women that raised large farming families and it sustained generations of carb-addicts who never once had a problem with troublesome belly fat.  Well, it did need to be said.

Biscuits were the staple, of course and women could whip them up in no time flat.  Some people have asked me if mountain people just don't like sliced white bread.  Well the answer is, they generally love it.  But years ago, there were no bakeries in these parts.  So people had to make their own bread which resulted in biscuits and cornbread because they were easy to make with baking soda and didn't require the yeast of the bakery breads.  Even the lard was rendered on the farm (but later turned to butter, then Crisco, then oil).

When my daddy went to school, he and his brothers and sisters would be embarrassed of their biscuits-- having biscuits to eat meant that your family couldn't afford sliced bread.  Today in the South the tables have turned and sliced bread at a proper southern meal is akin to blasphemy!  Gimme a cat head biscuit (biscuit as big as a cat's head) or a slice of cornbread any day over that yeasty, fancy, northern bread (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course).

The best way to eat biscuits is hot and fresh out of the oven.  But did you know the biscuit is a gift that keeps on giving?  Yep.  After the biscuits are left over, the best way to make them is to prepare them in a frying pan with sorghum, honey and butter-- these are homemade honeybuns!  Much better than those freakish things with a shelf-life of 50 years.  My roof isn't even rated to last that long!

Here's a link to a very easy to understand recipe for baking buttermilk biscuits from a website I trust.

Just in Time for Halloween: Ghost Cake with Flaming Eyes

We did this one last year and everyone loved it!  It has a cool effect when you light up the cakes "eyes!"

You'll need this gear:
Pastry brush
Oblong baking pan, 13 x 9 x 2 "
Large mixer bowl
Electric mixer
Rubber scraper
Wooden picks
Wire cooling rack
Tray 16 x 12 ", breadboard or aluminum foil-covered cardboard
Ruler
Small mixer bowl Sharp knife
Spatula

You'll also need these ingredients:
1 package (18.5 ounces) yellow cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
2 eggs
1 package (7.2 ouces) fluffy white frosting mix
1 cup water
2 sugar cubes
Licorice string
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Step 1:
Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Generously grease baking pan with shortening, using pastry brush.  Sprinkle a little flour into the pan and shake gently from side to side until flour coats the bottom and sides.  Empty out remaining flour.
Step 2:
Prepare the cake mix as directed on package. (When you break the eggs, crack each in the middle and pour out the egg.  Then save the 2 best shell halves.  Wash these halves and turn upside down to dry.) After mixing, pour the batter into the greased and floured pan.
Step 3:
Bake in 350 degree oven 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool the cake 10 minutes on rack, then remove from the pan to tray.
Step 4:
After the cake is cool, measure across one short edge of the cake and mark the center with a wooden pick.  Measure 4 inches down each long edge and mark with picks.  Prepare the frosting as directed on package.
Step 5:
Cut the cake between the center wooden pick and side picks in a curve to make a rounded top for the ghost's head.  Slide the cut corners down the sides to about the center of the cake.  Turn the corners so the cut sides are up.  To make arms that look as if they're reaching out for you!!  Attach the arms to the sides of the cake with some of the frosting, using a spatula.
Step 6:
Frost the cake with the spatula.  Place the 2 egg shell halves round sides down on cake for eyes.  Place 1 sugar cube in each shell half.  Make a mouth out of licorice string.
Step 7:
Just before serving, pour 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract over each sugar cube.  Ask someone older to light them for you.  Lights off-- it'll be spooky!

Vinegar in Your Laundry

Many people already know that white vinegar in a little bowl will remove odors of smoke, mold or mustiness. You can place a container in the closet on the floor or shelf if those unpleasant odors happen to be permeating your clothing and things. What many people are not aware of is putting white vinegar in your wash water at the beginning of a laundry load will soften and FRESHEN the items being laundered. The scent of vinegar disappears by the end of the wash cycle and everything in the wash will smell very clean. You don't need much vinegar: a half cup is a gracious plenty, a full cup is nearly too much. Make sure you add your usual detergent, too.  Forgetting that will make you think I give bad advice!

White vinegar is helpful if your clothes are full of a stubborn smells like permanent smoke scent.  Oh, and if you've ever forgotten your laundry by leaving it in the washer too long and it goes sour the white vinegar solves that problem too.  It's also great for pet smells and pet bedding and stuff like that, and for washing linens anytime.

They say commercial fabric softeners can create a coating on cotton fabrics, causing them to lose their absorbency, which is the last thing you want to happen to your towels.  The white vinegar will help the towels and sheets stay soft and fluffy without the negative side effects. One last word of caution-- vinegar may permanently set in stains so don't use it if you have stains you're trying to get out.

Traditional Mountain Breakfasts

Does the Fall leave you longing for a traditional mountain breakfast?  Even if you don't find your roots in Southern Appalachia, the draw of misty cool mornings looking out at the expanse of a valley or nestled in the comfort of a holler while gossipy the morning away sitting at the family table, drinking coffee, juice or milk and eating a boatload of food that will last well into the dinner meal-- is quite a draw.

I have compiled the top FIVE mountain breakfasts that you can choose to revive for your next morning gathering (what in the world is this "brunch" business, really?).

Number 5: Red-eye gravy (made from drippings of country ham), country ham, cat head biscuits, fried apples, fried potatoes, sliced heirloom tomatoes, eggs, and fresh milk.

Number 4:  Fresh fruit, hot homemade biscuits, molasses, sausage casserole to serve with sweet cornbread and black coffee.

Number 3: Apple pie, fried green tomatoes, dinner rolls, sausage patties, and fresh juice.

Number 2: Spiced applesauce, biscuits and gravy (from bacon grease), scrambled eggs, pork chops, grits, orange juice and coffee.

Number 1 traditional mountain breakfast is (drum roll, please): Fried apples, home fries, fried eggs and bacon, buttermilk biscuits, hot butter, and sourwood honey.

My recommendations from childhood.  Granny Watkins' house was a great place to meet up with my cousins and there would be food on the table until dinner time.  Isn't it interesting how there was always enough for everyone?