Dumpling recipes

This is the quick house version, made by the British method (suet and self-raising flour) but vegetarianised by veg suet and aromatifised with some herbs. Useful and delicious for one-pot, cold-weather, stodge-based, fill-'em-up cooking.

Ingredients
200 g self-raising flour
100g vegetable suet
20 grinds of sea-salt
20 grinds pepper
Small handful flat-leaf parsley, snipped.

Method
Sift the flour from a height into a large bowl and mix in the suet using your dominant index finger. Add salt, pepper, parsley to the dry mixture. Drizzle a thin stream of water into a well in middle of dry ingredients, incorporating this using the same single-digit mixing technique. Just as for scones, alchemists of the technique recommend minimal handling to retain air pockets in the mixture. When adequately moistened, the mixture should just have formed a ball. Make golfball-sized balls of the mixture (10-12 for this quantity) and let these rest in the fridge for 30 mins (another empirically-untested but alchemical tip).

The stew in which the dumplings are to be boiled/steamed should be slightly more watery than desired, and have reached a stable simmer under a lid before the dumplings are added and the lid replaced. These sink to the bottom of the pan, before rising progressively above the stew surface as cooking proceeds. However, do not lift the lid too often to observe this process, as this will impair the steam-driven rising process.

Variant
While claiming no expertise, an impression is gained that the dumplings of Germany, Alto-Adige and central European cuisines are more typically constituted from moistened leftover stale breadcrumbs than flour and fat, making a kind of MittelEurope bubble-and-squeak. It's this base that forms the stuffing for a traditional family Xmas stuffing, which can be usefully adapted to a vegetarian/vegan diet.

Kathie's Ancestral Stuffing, adapted for Nut Roast Balls

Ingredients
One box commercial sage'n'onion stuffing (ingredients breadcrumbs and seasonings)
2 sticks celery, 6 mushrooms, 1 large onion, all small-diced and sweated in veg oil till soft.
Deluxe Nut Roast Balls extras
Handful raw unsalted nuts (hazels, walnuts, brazils, pinenuts are tastiest), dry-roasted till fragrant.
One egg (if wished), beaten

Method
Combine all desired ingredients and drizzle in just sufficient water while stirring with index finger to make mixture form a gloopy ball. Allow it to rest for > 30 mins, as the breadcrumbs will absorb a lot of the free water over this time. Stuff your bird (Kathie's Ancestral Stuffing) or (with the addition of the protein-rich nuts) form the mixture into gorilla-testicle sized balls which can be either boiled in a stew for the steamed dumpling version, or alternatively baked in a moderate oven (gas mark 5) for 40mins, and served with a capsicum-sundried tomato sauce.