Beef Stew

Every time I make something I've never made before (especially if it's a food I'm not used to eating, never mind cooking), I'm incredibly worried it won't come out perfectly, but somehow I manage it (most of the time).
All the recipes for beef stew I looked up needed red wine or tomatoes/tomato paste, both of which I did not have. Being underage I couldn't just go buy some wine, but I don't recall my parents ever making their beef stew with wine anyway. They weren't big wine drinkers. So I adapted this recipe to fit what I had in the kitchen, as usual. I unfortunately had no bay leaves so I used a bunch of fresh sage leaves as a substitute, though I would recommend the bay leaves if you have them.

• 1 eye round roast, cut into 1″ chunks
• 1/4 cup of flour
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (or 2 Tbsp pre-chopped garlic)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tbsp thyme
• 2 1/2 cups of beef broth
• 3 Tbsp tomato sauce
• 4 potatoes, diced

First, brown the meat. Coat the chunks of roast in the flour, and heat the olive oil in the bottom of a large pan. You might have to brown the chunks in batches, because you don't want to overcrowd the pot. After all of the meat is browned, remove it and set it aside. You’ll be left with a lot of gunk on the bottom of your pan. That's what makes the stew taste so good.
Add the carrots/celery/onion/garlic on top of this, along with the bay leaf, thyme, and a pinch of salt. When the onions are transparent, add your meat back to the pot along with your broth and tomato sauce.
Use a wooden spatula or whisk and scrape the bottom of the pan to release all of the brown bits.
Cover, and cook on medium/low for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally (and gently scraping the bottom to make sure nothing burns). After the hour has gone by, add the potatoes, and cook for an additional 35 mins.

Chicken & Dumplings

Chicken and dumplings is one of my absolute favorite meals. Especially because it's like chicken pot pie without the pie crust (and if you know me, you know I'm not a huge fan of pie crust unless it's made from cookies or graham crackers). Plus it's super easy to make, warms you up on cold days, and you almost always have all the ingredients in your pantry.

I had a rotisserie chicken I needed to get rid of and I'd never actually made it myself before, but I thought it tasted pretty delicious, so I'd call it a success.

It should be noted that I used a combination of a recipe found online (via Feast Ur Eyes) and my knowledge of watching my father make this on occasion to write up this exact recipe. Coincidentally, I didn't have some of the ingredients so I improvised. Here are my changes:

• no celery or peas
• 4 sage leaves instead of bay leaves
• shredded rotisserie chicken instead of making my own
• one carrot because it was absolutely enormous

but if you do have the correct ingredients, either way is fine, obviously (also, if you don't have heavy cream, you can just use milk, whipping cream, light cream, etc). I don't have any pans with lids, nor do I own a dutch oven, so I used the deepest pan we had and used my cutting board as a lid, which worked fine, except I should have added more broth. The dumplings sucked so much of the broth up while cooking that there wasn't very much left and a lot of chicken ended up stuck to the bottom of the pan.

The dumplings turned out HUGE, but that's what I get for eyeballing the size and trying to fit all of them into my tiny, too shallow pan.

Chicken & Dumplings

• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• salt
• pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups chicken broth (1 cup reserved)
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 2 cups cooked chicken, shredded 

For the dumplings:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley (can be substituted with rosemary, thyme, basil, etc)

Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in large dutch oven (or a deep pan with a lid) over medium heat. Sauté onion until softened, about 2 minutes. Add carrots, celery, salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaves. Sauté until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Add 3 cups chicken broth, scraping any brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Add in most of the chicken and the peas. In a separate bowl, heat 1 cup chicken stock and slowly whisk in 1/4 cup flour (use a sieve to pour mixture into the soup if it is lumpy). Bring soup up to a boil and reduce to simmer, uncovered, about 10 minutes, or until broth is thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir flour, baking powder, parsley, and salt in large bowl. Stir in cream until incorporated (dough will be very thick).

Discard bay leaves and return stew to rapid simmer. Add reserved chicken to stew along with any accumulated juices. Using 2 large soup spoons, a small ice cream scoop, or your hands, drop golf ball-sized dumplings onto stew about 1/4 inch apart (you should have 16 to 18 dumplings). Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until dumplings have doubled in size (or until a toothpick inserted into them comes out clean), 15 to 18 minutes. Serve.