Root Vegetable Stew with Herb Dumplings

The kitchen window has steamed up again. It does this every time something slow is on the hob, and tonight it's a pot of roots that have been quietly giving themselves over to thyme and cider for the best part of an hour. Outside it's the sort of dark, damp November evening that makes you want to lock the door and stay put. Inside, it smells like exactly the right decision.

This is not a recipe that tries to be more than it is. Carrots, parsnips, swede, turnips: the unglamorous end of the vegetable stall, the ones nobody photographs. But simmered slowly in good stock with a splash of dry cider and a few sprigs of thyme, they become something worth sitting down for. Sweet and earthy and savoury all at once, with a broth that thickens as it cooks into something that coats the back of a spoon.

The dumplings are the thing, though. Suet dumplings, herbed and dropped onto the surface of the stew to steam with the lid on. They puff up into something impossibly light on top while their undersides turn damp and savoury from the broth. I've tried making this without them and it felt incomplete, like a sentence that stops before the full stop.

I wrote it down in the notebook last winter: roots, dumplings, Tuesday, rain. The kitchen smelled of thyme and the windows were blind with condensation. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate in front of someone on an evening like that.