Chicken Soup with Dumplings and Blueberry Cobbler

Christmas is over and while it was a great one, nature decided to leave both of us with a big fat cold under the tree!  With sore throats and and overall feeling of blah, I decided comfort food and soup might be just the ticket for tonight.  I have been drooling over the picture of the chicken soup with dumplings recipe for quite a while and had also picked up some fresh blueberries for the cobbler recipe.

Chicken and dumplings in the South usually consists of a thick mixture with chicken, cream, butter, and dumplings.   This recipe is truly more of a chicken soup with dumplings added as garnish.  The dumplings are made with pate a choux (cream puff dough) so they are light and airy unlike the biscuit dumplings we are used to.  The soup itself is a chicken soup with cooked celery and carrots.  The ticket to the soup is the broth and it is intended to be the star ingredient.

The book says that "having a cobbler in your repertoire gives you great versatility, because cobblers can be made with so many fruits and are easy to prepare."  I agree with this statement and it tends to be my go to throw together dessert rather I have fresh, canned, or frozen fruit on hand.  I have to admit my recipe is the typical cup - a cup - a cup recipe.  You know the one...fruit, then a cup of flour, cup of sugar, and cup of milk.  I anticipated many more steps to this cobbler based on the previous recipes and was pleasantly surprised at how easy this recipe was and it was so much better!

The first step for the soup is to make the broth.  The recipe calls for homemade chicken stock (which is one of the recipes).  However, please forgive me but it's Monday night after a work day so I cheated and used Fresh Market chicken stock (which was really good).  To the stock, I added cooked carrots, onions, celery, and leeks and allowed the stock to simmer over the stove.

Next I started the dumplings by adding flour to melted butter, water, and salt over low heat.  The dough was kind of a like a roux in that I cooked the flour for a few minutes until it smelled nutty.  I added the cooked dough to my mixer with eggs, dijon mustard, and chives.

  I then formed the very sticky dough into dumplings and cooked them in simmering water.  This was the finished dumpling, I know the shapes look funny as I said they were sticky!

To finish the soup, I boiled chopped celery until it was cooked through and also cooked sliced carrots over the stove with a little honey, garlic, and thyme added.  Meanwhile I made the roux recipe from the book which is basically just cooked flour in butter to add to the soup to thicken the stock.

 Before adding the roux, I drained the broth and discarded all of the vegetables used to flavor the soup.  I literally flushed about four cups of perfectly good vegetables down the disposal that were just used to flavor...my grandmother would not be happy with me!

I added the roux to the broth and after letting it cook out, I added the cooked celery, carrots, chicken, and dumplings and stirred in more chives and champagne vinegar. 

To start the cobbler, I creamed butter and sugar together with my mixer, added eggs, and then alternated a flour mixture and buttermilk until mixed.  I then tossed the blueberries with a little sugar, flour, and lemon zest.

After spreading the blueberries in the pan, I put dollops of the crust over the blueberries.  I then sprinkled a mixture of sugar and cinnamon over the batter.

After baking for about forty minutes, it was ready to serve with vanilla ice cream.

The soup and cobbler were both delicious.  The dumplings in the soup were light and airy and the broth was really silky and flavorful.  Next time, I think I will add a little more chicken and vegetables for a heartier soup as the soup was basically all broth with pieces of everything else.  It really was fine though because the broth was so good...those wasted vegetables really did serve a purpose!  As good as the soup was, the star was really the cobbler.  It was so easy and so good!  The cake like topping really made it taste like a blueberry muffin.  I think I have found a new replacement for my cup - a cup - a cup recipe. 

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