The Startup Cook : Baguette Dumplings

Pasta and Garlic Bread are regular items at dinner. Here at home, one cannot imagine devouring their pasta without some crusty garlic bread.  Therefore a fresh French loaf is urgently purchased to make the dining experience perfect.

Despite the popularity of garlic bread in my house, there is always leftover French loaf. Unlike regular bread these sorts of loaves have an extremely short shelf life. More than once, I’ve performed the unfortunate exercise of throwing stale baguette in the garbage bin.

But one does not need to engage in this guilty task any longer, because Rachel Khoo has the answer. Taken from her The Little Paris Kitchen series and book, ‘Baguette Dumplings’ is an extremely smart method of dealing with the excess bread issue.

Convenient, tasty and comforting... what more can stale bread ask for?
 

Ingredients

1 ½ cups of stale bread cubes
1 cup of milk
20 grams of parsley
1 egg
2 tbs of flour
1 tbs of butter or margarine
1 tsp of paprika
½ tsp of salt
½ tsp of pepper


Directions

Place the bread cubes in a big bowl.

Pour the milk on to the bread cubes and set aside.

Fine dice the parsley and add it to the milk soaked bread cubes.

Add in the egg, paprika, salt, pepper and give it a good mix.

Then add the flour in to the mixture and combine well.

Take the mixture and (using your hands) mould them in to golf ball size dumplings and set aside.

On a medium high heat, melt the butter in a frying pan.

When the butter has melted and has just started bubbling, add the dumplings.

Fry the dumplings until they are brown in colour.



Disasters, Warnings and Tips

Using tongs keep rotating the dumplings and ensure that each side is fried.

Do be careful about the quantity of milk, too much will make the bread cubes soggy and unusable.

I love Rachel Khoo’s style.

These dumplings do look like fried meatballs.

Cut bread cubes in to small squares. NOT miniscule ones.

Rachel Khoo has her own restaurant in her little apartment. So cool!

If the bread is too soggy, it won’t form in to dumplings.

Ensure the dumplings are golf ball size small, as it needs to cook well.

I like my dumplings a little over fried.

Serve this with soup or (like Rachel Khoo does) with beef bourguignon.

Paprika was my personal touch to the dumplings.

The first time I made the milk overpowered the bread cubes. It was a disaster!

It’s perfectly fine to use leftover parsley. I know I do.