Learning To Cook: Make These Sprouted Spelt Flour Dumplings

We rely on quick recipes to keep us on track during busy weeks, but it's the longer, slower -- and often, more collaborative -- culinary endeavors that really give us a sense of belonging in the kitchen. These sweet potato and white bean veggie dumplings come from the mother-daughter food blogging duo behind Golubka Kitchen and their new cookbook, Simply Vibrant -- and they're just begging to be made into a tradition.

Host a weekend prep party with good friends and great wine and enjoy the fruits of your labor all week long, or pop a batch of these fiber and protein-packed veggie dumplings into the freezer for your future-self to savor...

I'm going to take advantage of a dumpling recipe to tell an anecdote, which has become something of a hilarious legend in our family. The Soviet Union during the 1980s was a patriarchal society, where most women cooked every meal from scratch and most men did not step foot in the kitchen. My mother's female coworker, very much from this kind of family, had to go out of town to take care of urgent business, leaving her husband alone to fend for himself. Worried that her husband might starve to death, she stocked a freezer full of home-cooked foods, including his favorite vareniki (Russian potato-filled dumplings). She gave her husband very detailed instructions on how to cook the vareniki, explaining that once they are floating atop the boiling water in the pot, they are ready to be eaten. When the time came to boil the dumplings, our hero followed all his wife's instructions and waited for them to float. He waited a while, something close to an hour, turning up the heat more and more and failing to realize that all the dumplings had stuck to the bottom of the pot, since he had never been instructed to give them the obvious, a good stir!

Now that you've learned to always stir your boiling dumplings, consider making these ones, stuffed with white bean and sweet potato mash and flavored with chipotle spice, onion and garlic -- a combination that I cannot say enough about. The dough here is a very simple, go-to dumpling dough, delicate but with a bit of that rustic bite from spelt -- a perfect envelope for the soft and hearty, root and bean filling.

Alternatively, you can use a ravioli stamp. You can also divide the dough in half and roll out one portion at a time into a 1/8-inch-thick sheet. Then cut out uniform skins using the rim of a glass or a round cookie cutter. Re-shape, re-roll and re-cut the scraps until you use all of the dough. Be sure to keep the skins covered so they don't dry out during the assembly process. If you use any of these alternative shaping methods, you may end up with a smaller amount of dumplings.

Carrot Top Chimichurri: I have yet to meet anyone able to resist freshly made chimichurri. This garlicky Argentinian sauce is traditionally made with parsley and served with meat, but can elevate many vegetarian dishes just as well. It also solves my dilemma of utilizing lush carrot tops that often come with market carrots - carrot top chimichurri is almost identical in flavor to the original. That being said, if you do not have carrot tops, make this recipe with parsley for a delicious classic. [olists num=1]

Discover more delicious recipes from the Simply Vibrant cookbook here: gluten-free millet polenta with spring greens and barley porridge with candied kumquats.

The post Learning To Cook: Make These Sprouted Spelt Flour Dumplings appeared first on The Chalkboard.

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