Chicken Noodle Soup

 

I've been slacking on the blogging, but now that I've finally finished all of the released books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (nerd alert), I don't have much of an excuse to keep slacking. Except I just went and started Downton Abbey, and now I'm done for.  

Moving onward... this is a very basic chicken noodle soup recipe. If you don't want to make homemade noodles, you can use as many egg noodles as you want for the soup.  There's also a lot of room to add other stuff that you might like to put in a soup.  

The whole chicken I used for the stock was a "soup chicken" from the farmer's market. Soup chickens are older and no longer laying eggs. I found the soup chicken to be really tough, so it didn't yield much in the way of extra chicken meat for the soup. I may have needed to cook it longer.  I'll use a regular roasting chicken or whatnot next time.

Makes about 8 servings.

Chicken Noodle Soup
Adapted from: Epicurious

Ingredients

1 pound chicken parts (I used thighs/legs)
2 stalks celery, cut into 3 inch pieces
1 whole chicken (about 3 pounds), rinsed
1 large whole onion, unpeeled
4 large carrots, peeled
1 medium whole parsnip, peeled
2 leeks, white and light green parts only
Homemade noodles, or egg noodles
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 bunch dill, tied together

1.  Pour 14 cups of water into a large stockpot.  Add chicken parts and celery and bring to a boil.  Meanwhile, rub the inside of the whole chicken with salt.

2. Add the whole chicken to the pot and, if need be, add extra water so that the whole chicken is entirely submerged in water.  Cover pot, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes.  Test the chicken with a fork to make sure that it's fully cooked. When it is, remove from pot and set aside. Leave chicken pieces in pot.

3.  Add carrots, onion, turnip, leeks, bay leaves, salt, and pepper. Let soup simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Use a mesh strainer to skim the surface of the soup and remove any bits of goop that have floated to the top of the soup.    

4. When the chicken cools, remove skin and shred meat into bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken to the soup (or you can make it into chicken salad, but the soup is better with more chicken).

5. Strain the soup and discard anything solid except for the carrots and the chicken pieces.  Shred chicken pieces into the soup. 

6. Two minutes before serving, add dill to the soup and then remove. Add salt and pepper to taste and slice carrots into the soup.  Add noodles to each bowl of soup before serving. 


The stuff. Chicken legs/thighs from Raghoo Farms in Fort Plain, NY, and soup chicken from Arcadian Pastures in Sloansville, NY.  Good stuff.

Homemade Noodles

I've been talking about getting a pasta maker for a few years now. I think I have some kind of pasta maker commitment phobia because I just can't decide which one I want to get.  There are heated online debates about the pros and cons of each one as well as friends' varying opinions.  Rather than make a decision, I made some noodles without a pasta maker for some chicken noodle soup (next post).  I spent a good portion of both Saturday and Sunday getting covered in flour as I tried to improve on the first batch of noodles.  It was worth it.   

My first attempt, I followed a homemade pasta recipe from The Pioneer Woman website.  It was easy, but the noodles weren't exactly what I wanted, which was mostly my fault because I cut them too thick. 

The second time around, I used tips from various recipes as well as from people who commanded their authority on the matter because of Italian ancestry: olive oil in the dough, using 00 flour, rolling the dough out very thin, and cutting the noodles very thin.  This recipe is what I came up with.  It's a basic noodle recipe that you can turn into any kind of dish that you like. 

Note: For increasing or decreasing measurements; it's 2 eggs per 1 1/3 cup of flour.  One egg will generally feed one person; so if you're cooking for 2, it would be 2 eggs and 1 1/3 cup of flour; for 4 people; 4 eggs and 2 2/3 cups of flour, and so on... That's about as much math as I'm willing to do here.  These measurements may also vary depending on how much your company tends to eat ...

Homemade Pasta Noodles

4 eggs
2 2/3 cups "00" flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pinch of salt

1.  In a bowl or on a cutting board, make a well in the center of a mound of flour.  Crack the eggs into the well.  Add a pinch of salt and the olive oil into the well.

2. Using your hands, combine the egg mixture into the flour until a dough forms and you can roll everything together into a ball.

3.  Break the dough into smaller pieces (it makes it easier to knead) and use your hands to move the dough around in any way you can until it's smooth inside and out (punch it, roll it, knead it, squeeze it, etc).  Repeat with each piece of dough. 

4.  On a lightly floured surface, use a rolling pin (also lightly floured) to roll out each piece of dough as thinly as you possibly can.  Use a pizza cutter, a sharp knife, or a bread cutter to cut the noodles into thin lines.   

5.  Bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil, with some added olive oil. Cook the noodles for about 4 minutes and drain.

6. Add the noodles to any kind of pasta sauce or soup!



Egg well:

Dough:

Kneaded dough: 

Broken into smaller pieces: 

Rolled very thinly: 

 

 Cut into thin noodles:

These noodles are from the first batch I made, which were too thick ... they also came out stiff and gooey. I think cutting the noodles thinner, the 00 flour, and the olive oil in the mixture and in the boiling water all helped to make the second batch much better. 

White Bean, Pasta, and Kale Soup

 

After a strict holiday diet of cake pops, ham, and various foods filled or covered with some kind of melted cheese, something lighter was in order. This won't last very long ...

Notes: For leftovers, you might need to add some more water or stock; the pasta and beans start to soak up the broth.  Lastly, I didn't toast the bread because my toaster oven has a tendency to catch on fire lately, but the bread was fine un-toasted.  

White Bean, Pasta, and Kale Soup
Adapted from: Martha Stewart

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 pound kale, stems removed and cut into 1/2 inch strips
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced or smashed (with a garlic press)
1 14oz can cannellini beans
1 14oz can navy beans (or you can use 2 cans of either one of these beans)
1/8 (or a tad under 1/4) cup ditalini pasta (or other small pasta)
4 cups water
4 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons sriracha sauce (optional, or more for added spiciness)
4 thick slices country bread
Grated parmesan cheese, toasted or un-toasted
Salt and pepper

1. In a medium-large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

2. Add half of the beans to the pot and lightly mash with a fork (a potato masher worked well here). Add water and stock and bring to a boil. Stir in kale, remaining beans, dried pasta, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.  Reduce heat and partially cover pot; simmer until kale is tender, about 20 minutes. 

3. Stir in sriracha sauce and pour soup into bowls. Add a slice of bread to each bowl and top with grated parmesan cheese.



These photos are from the first time I made the soup, when I carelessly threw in almost half a box of pasta:

I have a visitor this week. Chubs has been doing his best to discreetly torment Gracie: 

Vodka Sauce, Take Two

Vodka sauce on pasta is probably one of my top five favorite foods.  I've made it once before but wasn't crazy about the results.  This recipe was really good; the crushed red pepper gave it a nice kick.  I made a few changes because the sauce was still really thin after only 30 minutes of simmering.  I ended up simmering it for 2 hours, until it was nice and thick.  This reduces the quantity of sauce a bit, so if you do this and are making sauce for a pound of pasta, I would double the recipe.

Next time I'll probably separately sauté more pancetta and add it in at the end.  It gave the sauce a great taste, but was fairly undetectable by the time the sauce was ready.

Vodka Sauce
Adapted from: Food and Wine

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil
2 ounces pancetta, diced
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 cup vodka
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 35-ounce can whole peeled Italian tomatoes with their juices, crushed by hand
Pinch of sugar
2 basil leaves
1/4 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the pancetta, garlic (leave them whole), and crushed red pepper and stir occasionally, about 5 minutes, until golden. 

2. Deglaze the mixture with vodka and then add the tomato paste, stirring for about a minute.  Add the crushed tomatoes with their juices, stir in the sugar and basil leaves, and bring to a boil.  Then use the extra vodka to make yourself a bloody mary while you wait for the sauce to simmer (optional, but recommended).  

3. Reduce heat and simmer the sauce until it reaches your preferred consistency.  Remove basil and garlic and stir in heavy cream.  Simmer for another 5 minutes. 



The photos aren't spectacular but the sauce was! My sister and I share an obsession for adding broccoli to pasta with vodka sauce, hence the broccoli in the photo above.

Taste Williamsburg Greenpoint

A few of my friends and I volunteered at Taste Williamsburg/Greenpoint a few months ago. We got some delicious tastes! I am super late in posting this because I was trying to figure out which vendor had the bacon wrapped sausages as their taste ... I can't remember! But it was all delicious. 

I would definitely recommend going next year.  I think $75 or so gets you unlimited tastes and a few free drinks.  Or you can volunteer and get 6+ tastes for free!



A mini lobster roll from Walter Foods:

A brisket slider from Fette Sau: 

 Sopecitos de Carnitas and Sopecitos de Mushroom and Huitlacoche from Mesa Coyoacan:

 Sausages wrapped in bacon:

Lamb tongue from Masten Lake:

My favorite taste, Cafe Colette's pork belly and lady apple tarte tatin: 

A few more photos: 

 

Roasted Chicken with Honey, Orange, and Cumin

There are these ridiculous commercials on TV about a housewife who is "roaster-phobic" being confronted in an intervention by her entire family - I forget exactly what the product being advertised is - and however ridiculous, I've always felt a little roaster-phobic myself.  This roasted chicken was my first.

Despite hesitation, and Bittman's statement that making this chicken takes a certain "boldness of spirit," everything went just fine.  The chicken appears as if it's going to burn in spots, but you can leave it be (because the burny spots are crispy and delicious), or if you're really concerned, you can always lower the heat in the oven.

This is definitely a different tasting roasted chicken - it is on the sweet side, and despite the high oven temperature, it was nice and moist. I hate that word, but it had to be said.


Roasted Chicken with Cumin, Honey, and Orange
From: Mark Bittman

Ingredients

1 3-pound whole chicken (mine was closer to 4 pounds)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup honey
1 tablespoon ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Place chicken in a non-stick roasting pan, or line a roasting pan with 2 layers of aluminum foil (I used a 13x9 glass dish lined with foil).

3. In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice, honey, cumin, salt, and pepper.  Cover chicken as evenly as possible with all but 1/4 cup of reserved juice mixture.

4. Place the chicken in the oven, legs first, and roast for 10 minutes. Baste the chicken with the juices and reverse the pan back to front; return the chicken to the oven and repeat 4 times, basting the chicken every 10 minutes and reversing the position of the pan.  If the chicken really looks like it might be getting scorched, lower the oven heat a little bit.  Use reserved liquid if the liquid in the pan dries up.  After 50 minutes of roasting, insert an instant-read meat thermometer into the chicken thigh; when it reads between 155-165 degrees, remove the chicken from the oven and baste one more time.  Let sit for 5 minutes before carving. 



This delicious chicken came from The Meat Hook in Williamsburg:

I finally bought a baster and a meat thermometer: 

Sliced:

I think my favorite part of this whole process was the resulting chicken salad:
 

Pumpkin Pie, Take 2

I wanted to make a pumpkin pie to try to improve upon this disaster from last year, and I liked the sound of Simply Recipes' old fashioned pumpkin pie.  I used my standard flaky pie crust from Mark Bittman, though I really need to find a pie crust that doesn't fall apart so easily.

Also, for Brookly-ners, there is a vendor at Saturday's McCarren Park Greenmarket that sells slices of cheese pumpkins so that you don't have to buy the whole pumpkin or cut it open yourself.  It makes the whole process a bit simpler.  I bought 2 slices, and just barely was able to get 2 cups of pumpkin puree, so I'd recommend getting 3 slices.  

I typically see pumpkin pie recipes that call for sugar pumpkins (also called pie pumpkins),  but I preferred this year's cheese pumpkin pie over last year's sugar pumpkin pie. Thoughts?

Pumpkin Pie
Adapted from: Simply Recipes

Ingredients

1 pie crust (or one of your choosing)
2 cups of pumpkin puree from a cheese pumpkin
1 12oz can evaporated milk
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, plus an egg yolk from a 3rd egg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

1. To make pumpkin puree, cut a small-medium cheese pumpkin in half and scrape out the seeds/ stringy insides.  Lay the pumpkin halves cut side down in a rimmed baking dish and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour to an hour and a half, until you can easily stick a fork into the pumpkin meat.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

3. In a large bowl, mix together the brown and white sugars, salt, spices, and lemon zest. Beat the eggs in a separate small bowl and add to the sugar mixture.  Stir in the pumpkin puree and evaporated milk. Stir everything until well combined.

4. Pour the mixture into the pie shell (crust does not have to be pre-baked) and bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees.  After 15 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the pie comes out clean.  Cool for about 2 hours.

(Optional): to make roasted pumpkin seeds for topping: stir together 1/4 cup of seeds with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roasted at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. 



Cheese pumpkin slices from the greenmarket:

Pumpkin puree:

Pie!

Supervising: