Chicken Stew with Simple Dumplings (Obara) Istrian Style Recipe

April 26, 2023 by tina oblak in Adriatic Recipe, All year round recipe, Austrian inspired dishes, casserole, child friendly dish, child friendly meal, dinner, Dumplings, Easy recipe, family friendly dish, family friendly meal, first course, first course dish, first course meal, Gnocchi, hearty dish, Hearty soups, Istrian cuisine, Istrian dish, Istrian food, Istrian gastronomy, main course, main dish, Meat, Mitteleuropean cuisine, Mitteleuropean dish, Mitteleuropean food, Mitteleuropean recipes, no egg fresh pasta, one pot meal, one pot meat recipe, Pasta, Rustic dish, simple recipe, Slovenian cuisine, Slovenian food, Slovenian gastronomy, Soups, stew

This dish must be one of the most comforting foods ever. It is rustic, homely, authentic, it showcases true simplicity at its best, and best of all it is incredibly easy to make.

Onions, celery, carrots, and pieces or chunks of chicken are slowly cooked until the vegetables are completely soft and the chicken slightly browned. Then the water, fresh marjoram, and the seasoning are added, and the stew is then gently boiled for less than an hour. The simple dumplings are then cooked in the hot stew giving it a slightly thicker and velvety consistency.

This dish is part of the traditional Slovenian cuisine (known as Piščančja or Kokošja obara or simply known as Obara) and is very popular up and down the country, with a different regional variations along the way. An array of vegetables (peas, celeriac, cauliflower, leeks etc.) and herbs (thyme, bay leaf, parsley) can be added to the stew. It is cooked in households on a regular basis and can sometimes be found in rustic style restaurants, and then it is eaten as independent meal (main dish).

My paternal grandmother (nona Nada) and my maternal grandfather (deda Anton) made the very best, and they always took a great care and pride to cook one of the humblest peasant dishes.

They both told me that this stew was made from the old chickens that no longer laid the eggs – so everything was used, and nothing was wasted. The meat was quite hard, and tuff and it needed hours of cooking in order to become more tender, but it did provide a very flavoursome and tasty stew. It was then served with simple flour dumplings floating elegantly on top, and sometimes an egg would be added to the basic flour batter for extra richness (one of the variations on the dumplings recipe calls for semolina flour).

This stew is one of the top favourite dishes in the family, and here I am sharing the recipe of my grandparents from Slovenian Istra.

The recipe for the dumplings used for this stew are inspired and originated from Austrian style gnocchi called Nockerel (the batter is made with eggs and flour, then they are cooked in hot boiling water and eaten as a main dish with different sauces, beef goulash being the most common one).

This gastronomic influence will come as no surprise as Slovenia is geographically very close to Austria and was once also ruled by the Austro- Hungarian Empire.

Recipe

Ingredients for the stew

Serves 4-6

1 big onion (about 220g), peeled and finely chopped
1 carrot (about 100g), peeled and finely chopped or finely grated
1 celery stick (about 40g), finely chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
700g roughly of chicken meat like tights, drumsticks, wings, breast
(chicken pieces that you choose can be on the bone or without, with the skin or skinless, bear in mind that the skin will give the stew more flavour but can also make it too oily and greasy and potentially unpleasant to eat).
For this recipe I used ½ of the whole chicken and cut it in smaller random sized chunks and removed most of the skin.
1 generous Tbsp fresh marjoram, very finely chopped (you can also use dry marjoram)
1 Tbsp white flour
2 litres of water
sea salt
black pepper
Ingredients for the dumplings
200g white plain flour
150ml roughly water
sea salt

Method

Place the olive oil in a stewing pan and add finely chopped onions, celery, finely grated carrots, and the chicken meat.

Season with sea salt and black pepper and cook altogether, very slowly on gentle heat, stirring quite frequently until the vegetables cook down completely and become soft and the chicken is lightly brown and caramelized on the outside. This could take up to 45 minutes, but it is crucial for the success of the dish.

Sprinkle with flour and stir, then add the water, chopped marjoram, and bring to boil.

Turn the heat down, partially cover with the lid, and cook gently for about 45 minutes.

While the stew is cooking prepare the batter for the dumplings.

Put the flour in a bowl and add a pinch of sea salt.

Gradually start pouring the water and mix with the fork until you get the consistency of a quite thick pancake batter. Beat the batter until it gets quite stiff and lump free. Set aside and leave to rest until the chicken stew is cooked.

Taste the stew and adjust the seasoning with sea salt and black pepper.

Remove the chicken pieces form the stew. Remove the skin and the bones.

To make the dumplings dip the spoon into the gentle boiling chicken stew (this should prevent the batter sticking to the spoon).

Simply scoop up with a side of a teaspoon a bit of batter and gently drop it in the stew (dipping the teaspoon into the hot stew will help the batter just slide off the spoon, if it does not, help yourself with another spoon).

Repeat the process and drop the dumplings into the hot stew one by one until you finish all the batter.

Cook the dumplings for about 5 minutes in gently boiling stew (do not boil the stew aggressively).

Put back in the stew the pieces of chicken (free of bones and skin) and serve hot immediately.

Just a thought

This stew, like most stew and soups, is best made in advance.

You can keep cooked chicken stew in the fridge in an airtight container for about two days.

This dish freezes very well.

Dumplings can be made using buckwheat flour instead of white plain flour and the amount of water needs to be adjusted accordingly (different types of flour absorb different quantities of liquid).

Dumplings can also be made using the eggs. Crack one egg into a bowl and whisk gently. Add a pinch of sea salt, plain white flour and water as needed to obtain a fairly thick batter.

You can also use two eggs and white flour without the addition of water.

Wine suggestion

Alto Adige Pinot Grigio DOC "Porer" 2021 - Alois Lageder

Bread dumplings Recipe

Beans and Sardines

March 23, 2022 by tina oblak in Adriatic Recipe, Austrian inspired dishes, Autumnal dish, Autumnal recipe, casserole, Celebratory dish, Central European recipes, dinner, Dumplings, Eastern European dishes, Eastern European recipes, Easy recipe, Istrian cuisine, Istrian dish, Istrian food, Istrian gastronomy, main course, main dish, Mitteleuropean cuisine, Mitteleuropean dish, Mitteleuropean food, Mitteleuropean recipes, one pot meal, Rustic dish, Side Dishes, Slovenian cuisine, Slovenian food, Slovenian gastronomy, stew, supper, Vegetarian, Winter dish, Winter recipe, family friendly meal, child friendly meal, child friendly dish, family friendly dish

Bread dumplings are a real crowd pleaser, they are made from a mixture of stale bread soaked in milk and combined with fresh parsley, marjoram, onions, pancetta, beaten egg, seasoned with sea salt and black pepper, then formed into a ball shape and gently cooked in simmering water.

They can be easily turned into a vegetarian friendly option by simply omitting the meaty element and adding, if prefer, a bit of grated cheese, depending on your preference.

They are served as a perfect companion to stews, braised meats and roasted meats with a gravy. The idea behind these dumplings is to squash them with the fork, and this will soak up all the juices of whatever is accompanying them. In other words, it is an ideal side dish for almost anything that has some kind of sauce with it.

I simply love the recipes that provide some kind of a solution to the “problem” of avoiding food waste, and in this case the recipe is a brilliant side dish that uses - nothing more than stale bread as the key ingredient.

This is one of those recipes that you do not really need to plan since you can make bread dumplings when you simply end up with old bread and do not know what to do with it. If you have quite a bit of it to use up, then double or triple the ingredients since you can freeze a big batch of bread dumplings.

These rustic and elegant bread dumplings became a staple dish in a lot of cuisines of Eastern and Central Europe where stale bread has been very cleverly turned into a pure delicacy.

In Slovenia, where I was born and grew up, bread dumplings, called Kruhovi cmoki, have been so popular they almost became a national dish, and this recipe is most similar, or actually almost identical to the Austrian and South German( Bavarian) variety, where it is believed bread dumplings originated from, and are referred to as Semmelknödel.

There are a variety of bread dumpling recipes, for example, in the Czech Republic, fresh herbs, onions and the meaty element is not added to the bread mixture, which is also not shaped into small balls, but instead into a roll, then boiled and sliced.

Similar to bread dumplings are Canederli, found in Italy, in Trentino Alto Adige, an autonomous province of Italy, and in Austria, where small pieces of speck (lightly smoked cured meat) and cheese are added to the basic bread mixture, then they are shaped into small balls and typically cooked and served in hot beef or chicken broth.

This dish was one of my favourite dishes when I was a child, and it really does take me down memory lane. My mother would prepare them quite often, and I am sharing here her recipe, a typical Istrian variation of bread dumplings, in which fresh marjoram is added to the basic bread mixture.

Ingredients

Will make about 8 dumplings, depending on the size.

310g roughly of stale bread (for this recipe I used 5 stale white baps)
250-300ml milk (skimmed, semi skimmed or full fat)
1 egg, beaten
2 Tbsp olive oil
a handful of fresh flat leaf parsley (about 10g), finely chopped
1 medium onion (about 100g), peeled and finely chopped
sea salt
ground black pepper
40-50g sliced pancetta, cut into very small pieces (can use bacon or lardons), optional
1 Tbsp fresh marjoram, very finely chopped, optional
all purpose flour (enough to coat the bread dumplings)
1 Tbsp white dry breadcrumbs (only if needed)

Method

Cut or tear with your hands white baps (or any other type of stale bread you are using) into small pieces and put them in a fairly large bowl. Pour over the milk, mix well and leave to soak for about 20-30 minutes or until the bread is completely softened.

While the bread is soaking in milk, prepare the onion and pancetta mixture.

Put olive oil, finely chopped onions and small pieces of pancetta in a frying pan. Gently fry the mixture until the onions become nice and soft and transparent but not brown. Cool the pancetta and onion mixture and set aside.

Add to the bowl with the soaked bread, the beaten egg, onion and pancetta mixture, finely chopped parsley and marjoram and season with sea salt and black pepper.

With your hand(s) mix very well all the ingredients, almost using a squeezing action, to thoroughly combine the mixture. You should end up with a bread mixture that is soft, and with a fairly smooth consistency (if you end up with bigger bread pieces just break them with your fingers).

Adjust the mixture, adding a bit of breadcrumbs (and never the flour, as the mixture will get too sticky and will become unworkable), one tablespoon at the time, if the bread mixture is too wet.

On the contrary, if you feel the mixture is too hard and dry, add a bit of milk.

It is important to use a bit of personal judgment and intuition here. The idea behind this recipe is using the stale bread or a combination of different types of stale bread which will absorb a slightly different quantity of liquid, therefore the moisture of the bread mixture needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Wet you hands (this will prevent the dough to stick to your hands).

Take roughly a handful of the mixture and shape it into a compact ball, about the size of a tennis ball.

Repeat the process until you run out of the mixture.

Put some flour into a deep plate or a bowl.

Gently coat each dumpling into a flour and remove excess flour (this will prevent sticking).

Fill a large pot of water and bring to boil. Turn down the heat and leave the water to a gentle boil.

With a slotted spoon, drop one dumpling at the time in a simmering water and cook for about 15 minutes. Do not allow the dumplings to cook in a strong boiling water as they might loose the shape and fall apart.

Remove cooked dumplings with a slotted spoon and transfer onto a serving plate or directly on the plates, serve warm.