Hearts and Dumplings for a FREEZING Saturday March 16th 2013

Gosh, this is such a cold spring. Hovering around freezing most of the time, raining tonight. With bits of icy sleet added in. And Easter next week...

Time for the pressure cooker again, more lovely lambs' hearts, with panceta (amazing Spanish panceta from Unearthed.. so good! ) simple root vegetables, and an unthickened Essential Cuisine lamb broth to mash my potatoes and herb dumplings into.

The trick to good dumplings is two fold..

1.  Don't make them too dry, you want a really soft almost wet dough to allow the baking powder to really expand. If you have a dry dough you will have dry dumplings like bullets.

2. Make sure the liquid (you can cook them in salted water if you think your stew is too dry, or just pop them on top of the stew) is BOILING when they go in, and simmering all the time. Again, it is down to getting the rising agents working quickly whilst the dumpling is soft.  If you let the heat go too low, you will have bulletty dumplings.

You want lovely light little pillows of herby succulence.. like these..