In the kitchen: Cheddar-tomato dumplings

Today we're making Cheddar-tomato dumplings. Heavy on the Cheddar. I love this meal because it is easy, frugal, and filling. Fabulous! (Sorry the spacing is so weird in this post! Blogger is just not behaving for me tonight) While I was cooking, Elin was emptying the dishwasher.

First, mix together flour, shortening, baking powder and salt. You can either use a food processor to combine everything, a pastry blender, knives, or mix it with your fingers. I was too lazy to pull out our little food processor, I had broken the pastry blender a couple years ago, knives take too long, so that left my fingers to do the work. Stir in the cheese and set aside.

Next, put some olive oil in a large skillet. Add a handful of chopped onion and cook until transparent. I keep a bag of frozen chopped onion in the freezer. Whenever I need onion, I can just pull out what I need and I don't need to spend time chopping.

Add flour, salt, sugar, and pepper and stir well to make a thick roux.

Next, pull two cans of diced tomatoes out of the pantry. Our tomatoes are happy tomatoes.

Place happy tomatoes in the skillet and stir to combine with the roux.

Next, add copious amounts of basil. If this was summer, I would absolutely be using fresh. But dried is what I have to work with right now.

Stir basil into the tomatoes, cook over medium heat for a couple minutes, and then cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

In the meantime, you can finish the dumpling batter. Add the milk and stir quickly, using as few strokes as possible.

It is okay that it's lumpy. If you stir it too much, it will become dense and heavy and nobody will like your dumplings.

Uncover the simmering tomatoes and put heaping spoonfuls of batter right on top of them.

Cover and let that simmer for 20 minutes.

It's like magic. The batter morphed into light, fluffy, cheesy dumplings.

Sprinkle some extra cheese over dumplings and cover again; continue to simmer for about 90 seconds or until the cheese is melted.

Viggo gives this meal a thumbs-up! We ate this with peas tonight; usually I serve it with bacon or sausage. Nate was at a meeting tonight, so I served this sans meat because it was just the kids and I. We ate almost all of them.

Cheddar-tomato dumplings

For dumpling batter:

1 C. flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 T. shortening

1/2 C. shredded Cheddar cheese

1/2 C. milk

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and shortening. Add shredded Cheddar cheese. Set aside.

For tomato mixture:

2 T. chopped onion

2 T. oil (olive or vegetable)

2 T. flour

1 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

2 15-oz cans diced tomatoes or 1 28-oz can

1 T. dried basil or a handful of fresh, chopped basil

In a large skillet, saute onion until tender. Add tomatoes. Add flour, sugar, salt and pepper; bring to a boil over medium heat. Add basil. Cook and stir for a minute or two, then cover and simmer for five minutes. Meanwhile, add milk to the dumpling batter and stir until only just combined.

Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto simmering tomato sauce. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Uncover and sprinkle with cheese; simmer until melted; only a minute or two. Enjoy!