Chickpea and herb dumpling soup

I love soup, one of the greatest meals possible during the fall/winter. Dark, cold, damp nights... soup is the greatest thing to warm up your insides.

I stumbled across this one many years ago and it quickly became a favourite. Its hearty but without an excessive amount of work or ingredients. Like many soups the longer the flavors have to mingle together the better it gets. The best part is the dumplings, little balls of tasty dough that soak up the goodness that is the broth, I always try to save them for last but they are hard to resist. Tender little rounds of cheese, herbs, and butter.

Chickpea and Herb Dumpling Soup

1- 19 oz(590 ml) can of chickpeas, drained
1- 26 oz(796 ml) can of diced tomatoes
3.5 cups of vegetable stock

1 tbsp of oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/4tsp chili powder

Dumplings

1 cup self raising flour
3 tbsp butter, chopped
2 tbsp grated fresh parmesan (optional)
2 tbsp  chopped herbs
¼ cup milk

In a large pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic a sweat until the onion is translucent.

Stir in the chickpeas and spices, and heat for 2 minutes. This gives the spices a chance to toast a bit, and gets the chickpeas a head start on softening. Add the stock and tomatoes and bring to a boil.

While the soup is doing its thing, time for dumplings.

In a small bowl, mix all of the ingredients(hold the milk), I use a fork as it helps break up the butter, fingers work as well, the mix will start to get crumbly. When it's all mixed together, slowly add the milk continue to stir. It will all come together. Now for the fun part...

Form the dough into cherry size balls and drop them into the soup! Smaller the size the more  you'll have in your bowl One tip to remember, they double in size when cooking so if they look too small, don't worry.

Soup should be boiling by now, give it a good stir then drop the dumplings in one at a time, they will start to expand right away. Then they're all in the pot, reduce the heat to a simmer over low heat, put a lid on and leave it be. The dumplings will take about 25 minutes until ready, if you opted for larger ones, leave them a little longer(no harm in taste testing one either). I leave the soup to simmer for about an hour before I serve it up. Just to get the flavors doing their thing.

A few months left in this Toronto winter, odds are this will be making another few appearances in my kitchen. A fantastic way to defrost on a cold day.

Try it out, let me know what you think :)

xo Jenn