A suprise meal

 Everyone knows about Eckert's farm and store and restaurant, right?  If not, here is a quick summary of what you have been missing: Long ago at a galaxy far and away, my grandparent's used to take my brothers and I, to Eckert's to go apple picking in the fall.  They would drive out and we would do the apple picking and then we would enter the country store, which I recall at the time, being nothing more than a large barn.  We would go in, get a wooden basket, go out and get apples, and then bring them back where they would weigh them and you would pay pennies for each pound of picked apples.  This was great.  Now, within the past few years, or year, they changed everything.   

This is what the Country store looked like a bit ago, with the restaurant to the left of it.  Then they did this:


You can tell that this farm is doing well when they can tear down their old store and make a huge one.  This store is very much on the inside, as high-tech as a Whole Foods or Schnucks.  As for the restaurant, it used to be tiny, country-style decorated and could sit maybe 50 people.  Now, the place is huge and can easily seat a few hundred.

Now, while the family is still running the farm and businesses, these 6th and 7th generation Eckert's have created a memorable and delicious menu for their restaurant to boast and surpass their apple and other produce picking.

My favorite item of all, is chicken and dumplings.  What I love about the chicken and dumplings at the Eckert's restaurant is: first of all, it is bottomless and second of all, it tastes just like my grandma used to make.  Well, first off, they call it "bottomless" on the menu and what that means is that if you have an awesome server, like we did, he will notice when you are remotely close to the bottom of the large bowl of chicken and dumplings and then he will come out with another large bowl and take the old one.  That's right, a wonderful server will come and replenish your ambrosia, before you can flinch, all for $10.  What made our time there even better, is that when I took what was left to go home, our cool server not only refilled my bowl and placed it into a to-go container, but then he filled up a second container for me.  Awesome.

Now, what about my grandma?  Well, she is of German ancestry.  Her parents came from Germany and started a horse farm near Sullivan, Missouri.  As time went on and she became older, her parents sold the farm for a flat in St. Louis.  Then, she went to work at a shoe company, on Washington Avenue.  Every day, her mother and grandmother (whom lived with them), would make their dinner, which I lust for because it was awesome German food.  Now, my grandmother made two kinds of dumplings:  One was a potato dumpling and then other was a spaetzle dumpling.  What I find most often called "dumplings" when paired with chicken, is the spaetzle ones, which are made with flour, water and some egg.  These are what proper dumpling became to be and as my brothers and I grew older, the spaetzle dumplings paired with chicken

So, the chicken and dumplings I ordered at the restaurant, tasted just like the ones my grandma used to make, which means, the original recipe they make to sell, must be similar in cultural or ethnic region.  Anyways; the famous fried chicken, which is also served and sold as an all-you-can-eat option, is also incredible and juicy and moist with a super crispy coating.

So, my thoughts?  Service, atmosphere and food, all get a 4 out of 5 stars for me.

Go there and give it a shot.

How common is chicken and dumplings?

A few days ago I was preparing a dish that most people don't know about.  It is a Lebanese dish called Mograbiah.  This recipe, from a large tome of Lebanese cooking, is a nice recipe involving chicken, vegetables, beef and most importantly, these large pearl couscous, made with semolina flour.  The original recipe wanted me to use whole chickens and boil in some water to cook them and essentially make a broth.  Then cook the other ingredients like the pearl onions, beef cubes and such and then add them all together with some mograbiah pearls to finish.  Like any good chef, I changed the recipe, and improvised.


I immediately noticed that it was a Lebanese version of chicken and dumplings.  Really.  These little balls, cook like pasta and are basically some water, fat of some sort, like butter or shortening and then semolina flour.  They swell up in water and get very tender like good cooked pasta.  Because they suck up moisture to get tender, they can absorb flavors as well and get tasty.  To make this dish, I cooked the chicken breasts in the oven and put them in a pot with 2 tablespoons of butter.  The mograbiah balls were cooked in boiling water and then I placed them into the pot with the chicken.  I then browned some beef cubes in oil in a pan and then added them into the pot.  I then browned some peeled and halved pearl onions in that residue from the beef and added some chicken stock to the pan to deglaze it.  Everything went into the large pot.  A little caraway seed was added with some freshly ground black lava Cyprus sea salt and some freshly ground pepper.  I filled the pot with enough store-bought chicken stock to cover everything, about 2 inches higher and let it come to a boil and simmer for about an hour.  What was finished reminded me of chicken and dumplings, with beef and onions, as the dumplings were essentially those smaller beads which had swelled up with delicious flavor.   


We all know that chicken and dumplings are made similarly.  I cook the chicken and add it into a pot where I add some chicken stock and butter, salt and pepper and start cooking.  In the same pot, as the stock starts to boil, I make some simple dumplings using Bisquick mix and milk and drop it into the pot in spoonfulls.  The dumplings cook and absorb the chicken flavor as well as thicken the soup.  Despite the lack of beef and the onions, it is amazing how similar the two dish taste.  Besides, one of them just likely happens to be a thousand years older than the other.  So, is our modern day, Southern-style chicken and dumplings a descendant of the Lebanese or Arabic dish as a whole?  Could be.