Soups and Dumplings

From the German peasant one-pot meal comes a full range of soups, soup-stews, and dumplings simmered in broths. Where Rhode Islanders come to blows over the proper way to make johnnycakes and Carolinians over the proper way to make grits, Wisconsinites resort to fisticuffs over a local soup called “chicken booyah.” Actually it is neither a soup nor German. It is a Belgian beef-pork-chicken stew, with lots of vegetables and seasonings and a sharp jolt of lemon, as in the waterzooie it resembles. Chicken booyah, like Belgian pie, owes its beginnings to the Kermess, centered on a simmering pot big enough to feed hungry dancers, foot racers, and chasers of greased pigs.