dumpling soup from my childhood

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• Lovage, dried
• 2 tbsp vegetable stock powder
• salt and pepper
• 1 large onion(s)
• 250 g celery
• 500 g carrot(s)
• 1 stalk(s) leek
• 300 g chicken thighs
• 150 g soup noodles
• 1 egg white
• Parsley
• 100 g durum wheat semolina
• 250 ml milk
• 20 g butter
• n. B. Egg yolk, approx. 1 – 2
• Nutmeg, freshly grated
• salt and pepper

Instructions

Working time approx. 3 hours; Cooking/baking time approx. 3 hours; Total time approx. 6 hours

Pour 2 liters of water into a large pot. Season the water with vegetable stock powder, lovage, salt, and pepper. Add the chicken thighs, skin and bones, to the water. Wash and peel the celery and 2 carrots, and add them whole to the meat. Roughly chop the onion and add it to the water. Let everything simmer for 2 hours. For the soup noodles, bring salted water to a boil in a separate pot. Add the soup noodles and cook for the specified time. My noodles take 5 minutes. Then place the noodles in a sieve and rinse with cold water. Place the drained noodles in a bowl and, once cooled, refrigerate. For the dumplings, put the milk in a pot with butter, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the semolina. Stir until a firm mass forms that comes away from the bottom of the pot. Let cool for 5 minutes. Add the egg yolk to the semolina mixture and stir well (I sometimes use two egg yolks if the mixture isn’t smooth enough). Let it cool for 30 minutes. For the vegetable garnish, wash, peel, and finely chop the remaining carrots. Wash the leek and slice it into thin rings. After 2 hours, remove the meat from the broth and let it cool slightly. Remove the cooked celery and carrots from the broth, chop them both up, and add them back to the broth. Add the fresh carrots and leek to the pot with the broth. Remove the skin and bones from the meat, tear them into small pieces, and add them to the soup. Pour the egg white into the hot broth. It will curdle immediately. Break the curdled egg white into smaller pieces and add it back to the soup. Season the soup to taste, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and let it simmer for another half hour. Place the semolina mixture in small portions into the palm of your hand and roll each one into a 2cm dumpling with a few drops of water. This makes about 60 dumplings. Add them to the soup and cook for 5 minutes. When they float to the top, they’re done. Place the desired amount of noodles into deep plates and fill with soup, adding all the ingredients. Sprinkle with parsley at the end. Notes: I calculated two bowls of soup for one serving. I used to cook a whole chicken. That’s too much for me these days. 300g of chicken thighs are perfectly sufficient to make a hearty chicken broth. I’ve increased the amount of semolina; I always found there weren’t enough dumplings in the past. I used to always add the noodles to the soup. Since I often make a large batch of this soup and eat it in the evening and the next day, the noodles get too mushy for me. So I always cook them separately. I know that many people form the semolina with two spoons. This is much faster, of course, but rolling them gives the dumplings a smooth surface, and I prefer that. I also think they taste better the smaller they are. Because the soup takes a long time to prepare, we don’t have it often. That’s another reason why it’s always something special for us.