Chicken Paprikas with Nokedli

I know it's been almost a year since I last posted!  Yikes!  I have some great new recipes I want to share, and some good old recipes too!  As some of you know, I am half Hungarian, and my grandmother has been teaching how to cook Hungarian style.  This is one of my favorite Hungarian dishes, and so I wanted to share it with you.  The chicken paprikas (pronounced pop-reek-awsh) requires that you have good paprika; the cheap stuff won't do for this recipe.  The nokedli (pronounced no-ked-lee) are small dumplings that you serve the paprikas on.  If you're not a fan of nokedli, you could use pasta instead.

Ingredients for paprikas:

• 2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts and/or chicken thighs, cut into bite sized pieces (technically you're supposed to use a whole chicken, but I find that to be rather a pain)
• a couple tablespoons oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 3-4 large tomatoes, quartered
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• salt to taste
• dollop of sour cream (optional)

Ingredients for nokedli:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons salt
• about 3/4 cups water

To make the paprikas:  In a Dutch oven heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the chicken and cook until no longer pink.  Add the onion and bell pepper and sauté until onion is transparent.  Add the tomatoes, paprika, and salt.  Cover and cook for about 20 minutes or until the tomatoes have completely dissolved.  

To make the nokedli:  Boil about 4-5 cups of water in a large sauce pan.  Mix the flour, salt, and eggs together.  Add a little water at a time until you get a sticky dough.  You might not use the entire 3/4 cup, or you might need more.  It should be sticky but holds together.  

Put the dough on a cutting board, and with a table knife, slice off a strip of dough about 1 inch thick.  

Slice pieces of dough off of the strip that are about 1/2 an inch long.  To keep the dough from sticking to the knife, dip the knife in the boiling water.  You'll probably need to do this after every dumpling to dump into the pot.

Push the slice of dough into the boiling water.

Keep slicing 1/2 inch bits off of your strip of dough.  When your strip has been all cut into pieces and pushed into the water, cut another slice, and repeat until all the dough is in the boiling water.  Boil the nokedli for about two minutes and then drain in a colander.  Serve the papkrias over the nokedli.  You can serve it with a dollop of sour cream on top if you so desire.