Q Ball's Chicken Dumpling Soup

It was by far the best pot of soup that I've ever made.

The recipe was my grandfather’s: George "Q-Ball" Sagorac. He liked to tell me he got that nickname because of his haircut, but not too long ago I heard a different story: Apparently, my Grandfather and his cousin, “Uncle” Eli Malkovich were pool sharks. Unfortunately, no one seems to know for sure, so I guess it'll just exist as a legend.

I really can't picture my Grandfather as a pool shark. Maybe that’s because I spent most of my early childhood with him in the duplex we shared on 83rd street. Tata, Mom, George and me lived upstairs, while Gramps, Uncle Jim ("Chach") and Uncle Milan ("Bud") lived downstairs. (Yeah, everyone in my family has a nickname, but I’ll save that for another story.)

By the time I was 11 months old, I had learned to crawl down the steep hall stairs of the duplex. Every morning, my mom would open the child-proof gate and I’d scuttle down those stairs to sit outside the door leading to my grandfather's kitchen. I’d wait until I could hear him moving around, then I’d knock or quietly say, "Grandpa?" and he'd open the door and let me in. My mom told me recently that he knew I was sitting on the stairs in the hall, but he always waited a bit before letting me in.

He would pick me up and sit me in a chair at the kitchen table. We always had breakfast together. Gramps would brew Maxwell House in the percolator and toast four pieces of Roman Meal. I’d wait patiently for my coffee (don’t be alarmed, it was really more like a cup of milk with a tiny bit of coffee). I even had my own special red cup and saucer. When the toast was ready, we’d sit together with our breakfast, drink our coffee, and I’d watch Gramps do the crossword puzzle.

Now, Gramps wasn’t just adept at making great toast and coffee. He was known throughout the Serbian community as the man who made the best roasted lamb, pig, and chicken. (The photo was taken in our backyard in New Berlin – he even made the machines that turned the spit). He’d sit out there all day drinking Pabst, stoking the fire and seasoning the meat with his special blend of spices. Sometimes, he'd broil steaks or fry fish and pork chops coated with Shake-n-Bake. He also made fried pork fat and this Serbian “delicacy” called Djeladija (pigs feet in gelatin). Now these were all extremely tasty dishes, but my all-time favorite was his chicken dumpling soup (with extra dumplings). No one, and I mean no one, made dumplings like my Grandfather.

When I was in my mid-twenties I moved back home, and Gramps came to live with mom and me. This time around, he was the one who waited until he heard me moving around in the kitchen. He was in his 80s now, and preferred instant coffee and oatmeal, while I’d moved on to decaf and multi-grain toast. The two of us still sat at the kitchen table every morning. He’d read through the paper, but he’d let me work on the crossword puzzle.

And I cooked for him. I was a vegetarian at the time, so Gramps became my guinea pig for all sorts of new recipes. I once made a roasted garlic and potato soup that used tofu as the cream base. I didn’t tell him there was tofu in the soup, and I waited until he finished an entire bowl before I unveiled the surprise ingredient. “That tofu’s not bad,” he told me. I even got him hooked on Garden Burgers with grilled onions, but his favorite dish was my garlicky cream of celery soup. Years later, when he had to move into a nursing home, I'd smuggle Tupperware containers filled with that soup for him to eat. The food in the nursing home was terrible, and sometimes I’d get him a burger with grilled onions from his favorite burger joint and we'd sit in his room, share onion rings, eat our burgers, and watch tv.

I recently had a craving for my Grandfather’s chicken dumpling soup, and since there was a roasted chicken in my freezer I decided to try my hand at Q-Ball's recipe. The soup part was easy, but I had no idea how to make dumplings. I consulted The Joy of Cooking, Vegetarian Cooking, Epicurious, etc. but they were no help. I finally called my mom at work. The recipe was never written down (none of his recipes were on paper; Gramps made everything from memory). I wrote down, verbatim, exactly what mom told me:

- beat 4 eggs
- add a bit of garlic powder
- add enough flour to make the mixture semi-thick, not too runny
- and don't let it form a ball! (she was very insistent about that)

I'd seen Gramps make dumplings enough times that I thought I could get the batter right. I remembered standing on a stool in his kitchen, my head close to the soup pot watching him dip a teaspoon into the batter then drop it into the boiling soup.

So I mimicked his technique as best I could and when all was said and done, this was easily the best pot of soup that I’d ever made. I knew that Gramps would have been proud. I only wish that he was here to share it with me.