How my boyfriend tricked me into learning to cook

Quarantine has taught me a lot of things and cooking appears to be one of them.

I’m not a chef, I’d like to think I’m a writer but the juries still out on that one. My boyfriend, Christopher, however is a Chef. This is lucky for me because not only does he make me laugh to the point my stomach hurts and teach me to love without fear, but he also keeps me fed and happy. ( I tend to get irritable when hungry. Lol) my lack of cooking skills does not deter him from trying to teach me, and he’s started coming up with even more cunning ways to do so.

Earlier this week, he mentions he’s been having a hankering for Chicken and Dumplings. Says he’s gonna make it for us for dinner on Tuesday, “ Babe, all you gotta do is: boil some carrots, onions, and celery, add the chicken and cook it for 4 hrs. “ “I’ll come home after work and make dumplings and finish the dish.” So I’m like alright, how bad can it be.

So then I get a ladder and find a pot and boil some water. Wash the vegetables: 3 carrots, two celery stalks, and 2 whole onions cut in half with the skins on.

Chop the carrots and feelers into thirds.

Cut onions in half, leaving the skin.

Drop it all in the water.

Bring to a boil.

Add your chicken breasts.

Unfortunately for Christopher and I, we only had one frozen breast in the freezer, so I went out and bought three more fresh, unfrozen.

(The other was thawed before cooking)

According to Christopher add 3 tables spoons of salt and 15 cracks of pepper, once boiling reduce heat by a third and monitor for four hours, adding water and seasoning about every thirty minutes as the stock and chicken cooks.

After 4 hours, one is left with a beautiful soup base and plenty of nutrient filled stock ready to save and freeze for later use.

My sweet baby then came home and proceeded to tell me we didn’t have the right biscuits in the fridge to make dumplings because I bought the ones with honey instead of the plain due to the biscuit shortage at homeland because of the pandemic.

So we ordered takeout and decided to finish the soup the nest day.

Morning came but once again the grocery store was out of the right biscuits to use for soup dumplings so I decided to get my hands dirty and make them from scratch.

I googled “easy dumpling recipe” and what came up was a simple formula of using flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, milk and black pepper to make a dough that I could spoon into dumplings.

With my dough ready, the next thing Christopher texted me to do from work was to reheat the soup base with the chicken breasts in it that we saved after having strained out the vegetables we used to make the base. Once one has cooked vegetables in water for as longneck as we did all of their nutritional value leaks into the water leaving them without value. So I took the Dutch oven with the stock full of the nutrients and chicken and put it back on the flame.

Heating the soup to its boiling point I began to add 3 more carrots and 2 more celery stalks to the water, chopped into bite sized pieces.

Once this came to a boil, Christopher added cream and a roux of flower and butter to add thickness.

After tasting the soup, I added more salt and pepper, and then I exclaimed “Baby! I did it!”

He just chuckled.