Beef Stew and Herby Dumps (by G)

I was not in the mood to make anything too complicated for dinner so I made what is perhaps the easiest thing to make - stew.

It was originally going to be a straight vegetable stew but I chickened out on that and bought some chunks of beef.  These were fried off with salt, pepper and leeks then whole shallots, chunks of potato and carrot were added. This was then deglazed with a little white wine then some bay leaves and chicken stock were added and the whole thing was simmered for about 2 hours.

In the morning I had researched dumplings and found a recipe of 2 parts flour, 1 part butter, 1 part cheese and some herbs.  When Biggs asked if dinner was going to be healthy I said it should be pretty healthy - that was just before I started working a block of butter into some flour, which seemed to put a little doubt in her mind.

The dumplings went into the stew about 15 minutes before serving. I don't know if I got the proportions a bit wrong but they did start to disintegrate a bit in the hot liquid. I guess that makes sense given they were 1/4 butter - I'm 1/4 butter and avoid hot water for just that reason.