When I was growing up, we often went to the Side Cafe in Cold Spring for dinner on Friday nights.  In that short time between when my parents were home from work and the start of the JV Basketball game, we'd run down to The Side to have their soup of the day - Chicken Dumpling.  I loved this soup - slightly creamy broth, carrots, big chunks of chicken, and perfectly done dumplings.  It was delicious.  At some point, The Side closed the cafe half of their place, the bar half taking over the cafe's counter and booths.  And - no more Chicken Dumpling Soup. 

It's been almost twenty years since I've had my favorite soup and I've tried to recreate it many times.  My first attempt was when I was 21 years old and Sevda and I lived in a small one bedroom apartment at The Chateau.  The recipe included chicken livers, which as you might imagine, are disgusting.  By the time the soup was ready, I was so grossed out that I couldn't even eat it.  On each subsequent attempt something was missing - usually the velvety goodness or the perfectly done dumplings.

Yesterday I tried another round, starting out with this recipe as my original source.  I made some changes to the recipe to more closely match the soup in my memory, then made even more changes to make it non-dairy.  It isn't a perfect match for the original, but dang, it's close.  It was DELICIOUS, and even better when re-heated the second day.


A few notes:
- The original recipe says that it serves four and since I was going to be serving six, I didn't want anyone to go hungry, so I doubled it.  The double batch was huge and after all six of us eating (including going back for seconds), I still had a large amount of soup left for another meal.  Since this recipe includes kind of a lot of steps, I'm going to leave the recipe as is - but know, it serves probably 12 people.
- The dumpling batter is pretty goopy and I didn't have any luck using a spoon to drop the dumplings.  Instead, I pulled some out with my fingers and flicked clumps into the pot.  Sounds gross, but it allowed me to work quickly and the dumplings were all kinds of irregular shapes, just like The Side's.
- The dumplings require a lot of liquid to cook and need room to swim around in.  This means that there's an awful lot of broth in this recipe, which means that you need a good-sized stock pot to make this soup.  I don't have a regular stock pot, but I do have a big commercial kitchen stock pot, so that's what I used.
- The evaporated soy milk can be made a day ahead and refrigerated, as can the shredded chicken.
- Making evaporated soy milk is not hard, but it is the kind of thing you have to keep your eye on while it cooks down.  It takes awhile, but once it comes to a boil it foams up fast then drops back down.  Using a medium-sized saucepan is a good idea because if the soy milk boils over, you'll be cleaning up the mess forever.  I speak from experience here.

Notes for using dairy (should you want to use dairy instead of the non-dairy counterparts in the recipe):
- Skip the step where we make evaporated soy milk.  Instead, use 1 c. evaporated milk (out of a can).
- Skip the step where we combine soy milk and vinegar to make non-dairy buttermilk.  Instead, use 1 c. buttermilk.  Or, if you don't have buttermilk, you can combine 1 c. milk and 1 t. vinegar to make your own.

Print it: Chicken Dumpling Soup