Treat of the Week: Chicken and Dumplings and Giant Ginger Cookies

Autumn brings savory, hearty dishes which you just don’t get the rest of the year. One of these is, in my life anyway, chicken and dumplings. When most people think of chicken and dumplings, they imagine a pot-pie like concoction topped with dense balls of thick dough. But, that’s not the way my mother makes it. My mom’s chicken and dumplings is light, fresh and bursting with flavor. Not mired in the heavy gravy one usually thinks of, this dish features delightfully tender chunks of chicken swimming in a light, herb-filled sauce in which potatoes, peas and carrots pop fresh flavor into each bite. The crowning glory is the dumplings—airy, fluffy dumplings adorned throughout with herbs. Served with a cool salad and homemade corn muffins, it puts you in mind of the changing of the seasons. 

The meal concluded with one of my very favorite cookies—my mother’s famous giant ginger cookies. A dusting of demerara sugar shimmers atop this soft, chewy cookies like wee diamonds. They’re alive with the flavor of fresh ginger and they’ve got the ideal texture. I just love them. Frankly, I’d eat them all day if I could, and I just might.

We enjoyed them with homemade hot chocolate topped with freshly whipped cream. Lovely! And, oh…look. What lovely mugs. Want your own?