CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL
Home-made chicken Soup is key to my happiness. It is my comfort food; quick to make and delicious.
My grandmothers all made chicken soup with a ‘boiling foul’. These old laying hens, (the chickens, not my grandmothers) had spent a life scratching around a farmyard and thin and scraggy, had laid their last. Their final job was to produce a rich deep nourishing pot of soup, enough to feed a large family, with lovely pieces of tasty, moist chicken as a bonus.
Boiling foul are almost impossible to find these days. Modern food production and health and safety legislation put paid to the farmer despatching a few old birds and dropping them off directly to the butcher’s shop.
Use packs of free-range chicken wings and drumsticks or a free-range chicken carcass if I can get a hold of one.
CHICKEN BROTH
500g pack free-range chicken legs or chicken wings
2-3 sticks celery with leaves
1 carrot
1 small onion, unpeeled
A large bunch flat-leaf parsley with stalks
Sea salt
Wash the chicken pieces and cover with about 2 litres cold water, in a medium saucepan.
(Don’t use too much water. You can easily dilute a concentrated stock once it is made).
Bring slowly to the boil, lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Grey scum will rise to the top. Don’t worry. Use a tea strainer or slotted spoon to carefully skim this off.
Don’t boil the stock as this will make it cloudy.
Use a damp kitchen paper to wipe round the sides of the pot.
Peel and wash the vegetables; you don’t need to cut them up.
As soon as the stock is clear add them to the pot with the parsley and the stalks.
Add a teaspoon of sea salt. Leave to simmer gently for about 1 ½ hours, with the lid slightly off.
Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Allow to cool. You can strain the stock and keep it refrigerated for 2-3 days or freeze until required.
PASTINA IN BRODO
Boil 3-4 handfuls pastina, small pasta, in salted water until nearly cooked.
Heat the broth, strain the pasta and add it. Don’t boil the pasta in the broth. The starch in the pasta will cloud the broth and spoil the flavour.
Serve with a tablespoon of finely chopped flat leaf parsley and some grated parmesan.
STRACCIATELLA.
2 free-range eggs
2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely chopped flat leaf parsley
Freshly grated black pepper
Beat everything together.
Bring the broth to a gentle simmer and dribble this mixture into it.
It quickly cooks in the soup.
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