Chicken Stew with dumplings

It was a little cold this morning, waking to 2 degrees C, with a slight touch of frost. After a busy staff development day today, we all needed something comforting to eat. The temperature was already dropping when we left college, I wanted to cook something really simple for dinner that was full of nutrients, but would give us a foodie hug.
I still had carrots and leeks left from the organic box, so wanted to use those up, there were 6 chicken thigh fillets in the fridge, so decided to make a very easy chicken stew.

Chicken Stew

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 1/2 leeks, sliced
4 carrots, sliced
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1 sweet potato, cut into chunks
2 1/2 pints water
1 chicken stock pot
6 chicken thighs
1 handful of paella rice
couple sprigs of fresh thyme
freshly ground black pepper
salt
1 cup frozen peas
cornflour and water

Method

Add the oil, onion, leeks and carrots to the pan, gently sweat the vegetables until the onion and leeks begin to soften, add the garlic and sweet potato and continue to sweat for another minute.
Add the water and stock pot to the pan, pop in the chicken and rice, throw in the thyme with some pepper and a touch of salt (add more later after cooking if needed).
Cover and cook gently for 1 hour.
Add the frozen peas bring the stew back up to the boil and add the dumplings, cover and gently simmer for 10 minutes.
Season to taste.

Depending on how you like your stew, if you like it thin, then serve as it is.

If you prefer a thicker stew, serve the dumplings, then thicken the remaining stew. Mix a couple of teaspoonfuls of cornflour with a little water, add gradually to stew and cook until thick. Add as much cornflour as necessary to get the thickness you prefer. Serve.

I wanted to find a gluten free recipe for dumplings, didn't have any suet, so went for a hunt online and discovered the following recipe. I added some mixed herbs to the flour and they were scrummy. I wet my hands before taking spoonfuls and use the damp hands to make the dumplings into soft balls.

Dumplings

150g Rice flour or any gf flour
2 tea spoons of baking powder
2 large eggs
a little water
optional a few dried herbs.

Mix to a dough and put spoonfulls into boiling stew and simmer for around 10 mins.

These are suitable for vegetarians and are lactose free and easy peasy