More comfort - dumplings
"one must be realistic about the limits of this least sexy of foodstuffs." Oliver Thring - The Guardian
Well I don't think Donna Hay or the good people of Coles Magazine would agree as they both feature dumplings of a not very ordinary kind in their latest magazine issues - Coles on its cover and Donna Hay in a feature on - yes - slow food (with a picture of my Le Creuset doufeu casserole!!
Donna Hay's have buttermilk, chives and parsley in them and the Coles ones have cornmeal, chives, rosemary, thyme, grated cheddar, butter and buttermilk too. Hardly the suet and self-raising flour of my youth. Yes suet - shredded animal fat to you. You don't seem to be able to get it here, so you have to make do with a suet mix in a packet. Or substitute butter.
Now to me those Asian things called dumplings are not dumplings at all - here I agree with Oliver Thring who has actually written an article that tells you everything you need to know about the history of the dumpling. They are more akin to ravioli, etc. Dumplings are more akin to gnocchi and all those other European kind of dumplings such as spätzle and knōdel. What I am concentrating on here are the English variety and variations thereon. Because it's not just Coles and Donna Hay who have variations. They have varied since their inception way way back when the people of Norfolk dropped a piece of bread dough into their stew to soak up the juices.
"they've always been plain and unabashed peasant grub, a cheap way to bulk a liquor or substitute for meat. The first dumplings, the Norfolks, are just bread dough thrown into a simmering pot: half-boiling and half-steaming, they expand into a slippery, comforting chew." Oliver Thring
I learnt this from Oliver Thring. Honestly I don't know why I bother sometimes as somebody has always written something very similar to what I was thinking of writing but much better researched and much better written.
So to summarise a few of the historical/geographical things. Every county of England almost has its own version.
"The Suffolk spartans favour a yeast-free version; in Derbyshire and much of the north they add oatmeal. Dorset dumplings are sometimes known as "doughboys", conceivably because they float in the stock like the buoys around the coast. Scotland, too, has a fine dumpling, the clootie, a long, curranty way from the pale, bleak padders of the south." Oliver Thring
Yeast? I have never heard of yeasty dumplings though I guess that comes from the bread dough thing.
Interestingly, my husband calls them 'doughboys', and so I had always assumed it was a public (meaning private) school thing, so to hear it's a Dorset word is intriguing. Where is the link between Dorset and public schools - for I'm sure that's where he got it from? His family has no connection to Dorset either. In my house they were just called dumplings and they looked like the ones at the top of the page. They were put in at the end of the cooking of a stew - dollops of the mix dropped onto the bubbling liquid - for our stews were pretty liquid - more like a soup in some ways, though there would have been chunks of meat and vegetables in there - and the lid was put on and it was left on a low heat for quarter of an hour or so. Which led to a hint of magic for us kids as when you finally lifted the lid there they all were - all fluffed up - half dry - the bit above the liquid - and half juicy - the bit floating in the liquid. There was a clever exchange - the dumplings absorbed the flavour of the stew and the stew became slightly thicker.
But I see that these days it's quite fashionable to have 'crusty' dumplings - I assume the crust is obtained by not putting on the lid. Delia has a recipe for A Bit of Irish Stew with Crusted Dumplings and yes indeed, once you have added the dumplings you transfer the dish to the oven for it to bake and crust over. I've never tried this. Interesting. And look at the illustration - a roaring fire in the background, a comforting glass of wine ... Also interesting though, for what is basically a peasant dish, the wine is in a cut crystal glass, the fire is lavish and there are some very fancy ornaments of some kind on the able. The plate is pretty posh too.
And yet:
"A dumpling is a food with few, indeed no, social pretensions." Alan Davidson
Oliver Thring's article seemed to suggest that dumplings were a dying thing, but I think this is just not true based on the evidence. I know Delia is very English and very middle class, but she has a few recipes with dumplings. The ones in the recipe above are fairly traditional, other than the crusting but she also has a recipe for onion dumplings. And these are perhaps the most adventurous from the English.
For Jamie Oliver's are pretty straightforward too, though he uses butter rather than suet and they're in a chicken stew rather than a beef or lamb one. I think he left the lid on though.
I have to say that, on the whole, the most adventurous thing the English do is to throw a few chopped herbs into the mix. But then when you're onto a good thing why change it?
And yet - in England is Yotam Ottolenghi who can always be trusted to come up with something completely different. Well he isn't English. (Not Nigel Slater this time). His dish is Beetroot Soup with Rye and Walnut Dumplings and to be fair I guess they might be more akin to European style dumplings. Very different though. And he too thinks you should keep the lid on. No crusting for him.
"For me, the answer doesn’t lie in size or flavour, then, but in texture. What all dumplings (be they Asian wontons or German knödel, Tibetan momos or Tuscan gnudi) share is a certain light, springy texture: they’re bouncy, ethereal, dreamy. Dumplings get their delicate texture from being cooked in water or steam, which keeps them at a rather low temperature (certainly never over 100C) and surrounded by moisture. By the time they’re cooked, the dumplings will have absorbed liquid and plumped up without completely firming up or developing a crust in the way fried or roast foods do. They also have the right degree of resistance in the mouth to guarantee perfect comfort, which is just what we need at the moment." Yotam Ottolenghi
So - there you have it. Dumplings I love them, however plain. Indeed perhaps they need to be plain to absorb the flavours of the stew or soup in which they float.
"'Dumpling' is one of the loveliest words in English, a term of endearment, indeed, for someone who doesn't mind being thought of as anaemic and squat." Oliver Thring
