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June 04, 2007
This one's for academom...
Soup (loosely titled Chicken, Corn and Cauliflower soup)
1. Begin with a roast chicken. Eat what you want from it, and save everything that's left.
2. Pick off all the edible meat you can find and set aside.
3. Take the rest of the carcass - any meat remains, the bones and the skin - put it in a pot, and cover it with cold water - have the water be an inch or two higher than the chicken parts. If you want you can add a chopped onion or some chopped carrot, but the skin will bring a lot of flavor.
4. Bring the batch to a boil. Skim the foam, and then let it all simmer for at least an hour. MOre if you like.
5. Strain the batch and discard everything except the broth.
6. Chill the broth, then skim the fat. Your homemade stock is ready for use.
Oh - if you don't want to go through all this, just buy a couple of quarts of very good chicken stock (like Kitchen Basics). You'll need some of this anyway to supplement the stock you made.
Now for the "real" soup. The "list":
chicken stock
carrots
onion
frozen cauliflower
frozen corn
chicken meat
cream or half-n-half
1. Chop a small onion, a couple of carrots and maybe a celery stalk (if you have one on hand). Choose a pot big enough to hold the batch of soup you want to make.
2. Heat the pan and add enough oil to cover the bottom. I use a combination of oil and butter, but the butter is optional.
3. Saute the vegetables until they begin to soften, about 5-10 minutes.
4. Add the chicken stock you made, and at least a quart of the kind you bought. Bring it all to a simmer.
5. Add a bag of frozen cauliflower. (I used the kind that came with roasted garlic sauce, and I used the sauce packet). Simmer until the cauliflower is really tender (this is important, because blending is next).
6. If you have a stick (or immersion) blender, use it to blend the pot of soup until there are few pieces of vegetables left. If you don't have a stick blender, you'll have to process the soup in batches, then return it to the pan.
7. To the now creamy looking soup, add some fresh carrot pieces, chopped to the size you want to eat. You can also add some diced potato. Simmer these for a bit, until softened, then add some frozen corn (amount is up to you). Bring it back to temperature and cook until the corn is nearly done.
8. Add the chicken meat you picked from the carcass.
9. Finish the soup with some cream, half-n-half, or even some cream cheese. This will give it a richer flavor, and if it's cream or cream cheese, it will thicken it even more. The goal here is fullness, though, not thickening. Bring it all up to a light simmer, let it blend a bit but not too long.
That's it - add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!
(be sure to let me know if you try this, especially if anything goes wrong!)
Posted by cageyer at June 4, 2007 07:26 PM
Comments
luurrvely.
thx.
Posted by: madeline at June 5, 2007 08:48 AM
Just stopping by to say hello.
Posted by: Tamika at June 7, 2007 02:54 AM