Liver dumpling meatballs in a heavenly broth

Author Notes

I have to confess when I was a girl the only recipes that really interested me were desserts! So I did pay very close attention to what my Hungarian grandmother was doing with all of those. I learned how to make her apricot cookies and the ones with the ground walnut and raisin filling in the yeast pastry, glazed with egg yoke.....but when it came time for dumplings, I did not watch closely enough. And Gram had the most amazing repertoire of dumplings to offer, not to mention her homemade perfect noodles! It may take me the rest of my life to recreate some of these, but I am going to try. So to start here is my effort with her liver dumplings. I will just describe how she taught me to make soup as well here. Basically, what you do is save every scrap of your basic vegetables and collect all the bones from your cooking to simmer to a broth. Save every peel from a potato, every top from a carrot, every skin from an onion, and every leaf from celery, and so on. Gram also taught me to make friends with the butcher: Ask for bones for soup to add to your own collection of bones! A ham bone will add music to your chicken and beef broth, which typically become one blended broth. Nothing was ever specified or measured, but each and every time Gram's soup was phenomenal! So just chuck all your veggie wastes in a pot with all your bones and lots of filtered water with sprigs of several fresh herbs and simmer away. Then after 6-10 hours, scrunch up the veggies, "wring" them into the broth, and discard. Throw away the bones and strain the broth so you have a clear, perfect broth.You really can't go too far wrong: Don't use broccoli though without specific intention. The main measure of your effectiveness: that the soup will turn to a gel in the fridge overnight. Then you know you have done well. This is a recipe about liver dumplings for a soup, well within the meatball family. There is no other way I can even stand to eat liver! I think all meatball recipes are about family somehow or other. This is a modest attempt to include the biggest inspiration in my cooking life: my Hungarian grandmother. Up until her death in her late 90s Gram continued to maintain a vegetable and herb garden. She is my real inspiration for cooking. She even got me to stand eating liver every once in a while this way. —Sagegreen