The Startup Cook – Chicken Dumpling Soup

Since of late, the weather in Colombo has been the most odd. It’s raining, it’s windy, incredibly sunny sometimes, cold in the night – a typical December weather minus the airborne Christmas feeling. However thanks to this tediously odd climate, colds and coughs are rampant. A little remedy for colds and those down with that incessantly clogged up nose is this Chicken Dumpling Soup. Inspired by a segment of Rachel Khoo’s Little Paris kitchen, this lovely recipe is fully equipped to help combat that awful flu. Slightly tweaked to suit the Sri Lankan palette and hosting a few extra veggies, every bowl of this broth is armed with tasty goodness making you feel better almost instantly.

Ingredients

1 chicken stock cube
1 litre of water
200g of chicken breast (boneless)
9 slices of (sandwich) bread
¼ cup of milk
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 carrots (large)
2 potatoes (medium)
50-60g of green peas
30 g of parsley
1 clove of garlic (grated)
1 tsp of ginger (grated)
½ a lime
Chilli powder
Salt
Pepper

Directions

Wash and cut the chicken breast in to halves. Juice the lime over the chicken, add chilli powder, salt, pepper and leave it to marinade.

Wash, peel and cut the potatoes and carrots.

Pour a litre of water in to a pot, add the chicken stock cube and boil on a low heat.

Once the chicken stock has been stock has been made, add the cut potatoes and carrots and let it boil.

Wash, fine dice the parsley and set aside.

Cut the crusts off the bread slices and add it to a food processor.

Next add the chicken, milk, garlic, ginger, egg + egg yolk, salt, pepper, chilli powder and blitz until a paste is formed.

Once the potatoes and carrots have boiled, take a spoonful of paste and take another spoon and form it in to a sort of diamond shaped oval dumpling (or quenelle) and slowly drop it in to the boiling stock.

Make each dumpling and drop it gently in to the boiling stock.

Once the dumplings have risen to the top, add the peas.

Boil for 10 – 15 minutes, let it simmer and then take it off the heat.

Garnish the soup with the chopped parsley.

Disasters, Warnings and Tips

Serve these with some buttered bread rolls. Yum!

It’s vital to flavour the dumpling paste or it WILL taste bland.

I love Saving Mr Banks (yes I watched it only now). Can’t believe Emma Thompson wasn’t nominated for an Oscar.

Add a teaspoon of mustard to the paste.

It's super fun to spoon make the dumplings (or quenelle)!

Don’t worry if you go a little crazy seasoning this chicken. When it boils most of it gets washed off.

Soak the peas in lukewarm water for a few minutes before tossing them in to the soup.

Use spices according to personal taste.

Did you see my soup bowl? Cute right!

This is a pretty convenient recipe.

By Shazzana Hamid