Chicken Soup with Dumplings

A really nice chicken soup! At first I thought it was just a bit too fat, but then I realized it was actually really velvety, which is due to the addition of the roux. We didn't cook it that much after adding the roux - it was thick enough as it was, and otherwise would have turned into a sauce rather than a soup.

DH thought that in making the broth, too much celery was used which gave the soup a slightly metallic taste; I didn't even notice. He also thought that the dumplings (which were really delicious, by the way), were too salty, as a result of which he added a lot less salt to the broth. I was actually quite happy with that outcome as I really enjoyed the contrast between the broth and the salty dumplings. I easily could have done without the pieces of chicken - just double the amount of dumplings, and you'll have less work, too!

It is a lot of soup - we made only half of the recipe, and it's enough for a midweek meal for four persons. If you served this as a starter, one whole recipe would serve 16 persons - seems to be restaurant quantity rather than for at home. It was nice enough for guests, though it lacked depth of flavour to make it perfect (or good enough for a 5 star rating in any case), and seems to be something you can comfortably prepare while you are actually busy with a different dish (i.e. a main course).