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 Chicken and dumplings, if done correctly, is not only a comfort food, not only meant to be savored, but it is something meant to be wallowed in, like you were suddenly an inch tall and swimming in warmish soup. The broth is everything. Fresh chicken allowed to burble with celery, carrot, onion. An indolent chicken. A lazy chicken. Boiled at medium low heat for a long, long time until the flavor is sucked even from the bones.
The flavors in chicken and dumplings come from all over the world. Developed by many different people. Anonymous people from cultures distant in both time and place. Chickens originally came from Malaysia, domesticated in India. The Romans were known to divine the future by observing chicken pecking patterns. I’m sure with a little research I could get a more complete picture of this. Guys in togas watching a chicken peck at food. No more bizarre I suppose than observing entrails or tea leaves or lines on a palm. What did it mean when the chickens pecked each other. Or your hand?
When I get my chicken it’s already dead. Packaged. I don’t have to wring it’s neck or pluck it’s feathers. I needn’t concern myself with pecking. The pecking order was set long before the chickens or I were born. The lives of chickens, by and large, have been subsumed under human necessity and desire. We want to taste chicken. We want things that taste like chicken, so we control every aspect of chicken lives to feed our protein needs. I don’t want to know what it’s life was like before I put it in the pot. Read more »
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