How to make great Chicken Soup

When my friend, Tammy, was sick last month, I whipped up some Matzoh Ball Soup for her and her family. I received the following response:
"My dearest,I want to tell you,that your chicken soup was one of the best I ever tasted in all my life! The chicken was sooo....succulent...and juicy! I don't know how you did it,but it was THE BEST!!!!"

Chicken soup is one of those things that can seem intimidating, but once you do it a few times, it's at least as easy as making pasta salad.

Cook time: 20 minutes in a pressure cooker or 1 hour simmering in a regular pot

Basic ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken
• 2-4 carrots - peeled, whole
• 2 stalks of celery, washed, cut into a few pieces
• 1-2 onions, washed or peeled, quartered
• 1-2 bay leaves
• water
• salt to taste - maybe 1 tsp for kosher chicken, more for a non-kosher bird (kosher chickens are salted to remove the blood.) 

Extra ingredients or alternatives:
NOTE: don't overdo leafy things or you will have a soup that looks and tastes more green than meaty.

• whole peppercorns
• fresh or dry parsley
• celery seed (I only tried it because I didn't have parsley last time, but It was GREAT!)

Southwest Chicken Salad

I have a special guest arriving today with multiple dietary challenges, including

• gluten free
• soy free
• egg free
• dairy free
• peanut free
• low fat

among other allergies and dietary requirements. She even has an intolerance for iodine; so she can't eat seaweed!

I wanted to make something that we could all enjoy on Shabbat, and that my guest could also eat when she comes. My husband went crazy for this. Inspired by Pressure Perfect by Lorna Sass, I created this festive low-fat chicken salad. I've done lots of gluten-free, egg-free experimenting in the last month. I hope to post some of those ideas this month, so stay tuned!

Extra Meaty Turkey-Cabbage Soup

Did you know Israelis eat more turkey per capita than anywhere else in the world?  Turkey shawarma accounts for much of this, but about half the poultry sold in the grocery store is also turkey.  And yet its practically impossible to procure a whole turkey, like the type us Americans like to feast on every November.  I usually grab a package of chicken when I'm shopping, unless I go to the meat counter and see how much cheaper the turkey is.  It's hard to resist the savings.

This week I bought three big ole turkey legs to make for Shabbat.  Unfortunately, we had a crazy Friday and I didn't get them in on time, so I was stuck on Friday night with three only mostly cooked giant drum sticks.  (Thanks to my good friend Hannah of Cooking Manager, I still had a DELICIOUS challah and potato kugel to make our Shabbat special.  Thank you, Hannah!)

Today I used my pressure cooker to make a delicious, meaty soup from the turkey and some vegetables that had over stayed their welcome in my fridge.  Into the pressure cooker went:

Creamy Roasted Tomato and Corn Soup with Cauliflower (non-dairy)

Autumn is officially here, but our vegetable stands are still selling some reminders of summer.  This soup is perfect to use up your summer produce and enjoy on an almost cool, and possibly rainy day.

Working in this order will lead to more appropriate cooking times.  You can prep while other things cook.  If you have a large oven, you may want to think of other things you want to cook at the same time to conserve energy.  This would be good served with toasted garlic bread or homemade pita chips.

1. Roast garlic.  You only need 2 or 3 cloves, but I like to roast the whole head and use during the week.
2. Seed and roast tomatoes.  I cut regular vine tomatoes in quarters.  You can also halve Roma or cherry tomatoes.
3. Wash corn and cut off cob. (Yes, you could use frozen.  I wouldn't bother with canned.) 
4. Wash cauliflower, cut to small bite-size pieces, and roast.
5. Begin cooking corn in the pot you will use for the soup.  Sauté in a little oil.

Gazpacho - Two Recipes for Summer

Gazpacho is great for the summer and requires no cooking.  Below are two different recipes. The first is a recipe my parents have been raving about, originally from SimplyRecipes.com.  The second is for an authentic Spanish Gazpacho from The Splendid Table guest David Rosengarten.  It makes a creamy, silky soup with just a few more steps, but less ingredients, than the first recipe.

Matzoh Ball Soup

Kneidalach or matzah balls are a traditional soup accompaniment year round, but for many, Pesach, or Passover, is when they expect this treat. 

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1.5 Tbsps cold water, seltzer/soda water, or cold broth
• 2 Tbsps oil or chicken fat (you could scrape it off the top of cold soup if you make it a day ahead)
• 1/2 cup matzoh meal
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch of pepper
• wide pot with top and minimum 5 inches of broth

Directions:

1. Beat together with a fork eggs, oil, liquid.
2. Mix in matzoh meal, salt, and pepper.
3. Refrigerate for about an hour. The matzoh meal needs time to absorb the liquid and chill well.
4. Bring broth the a boil.
5. Wet hands with cold water and form small balls.
6. Simmer covered 20-35 minutes.

For matzoh ball tips and soup recipe see How to make great Chicken Soup.



You can make matzoh meal in your food processor from machine or hand-made shmura matzoh, or you can buy it plain or seasoned in little packets made by Manishevitz, Osem, etc.  How do you like your matzoh balls? Firm or fluffy? Small or soft-ball sized?

Please comment with your maztoh ball memories!

For more on making broth, see
How to make great Chicken Soup
Stock Pile - or - What I Learned from My Snails.

Stock Pile - or - What I Learned from My Snails

our pet snail, "Gal" eating a carrot peel

I temporarily adopted two snails for four weeks in January.  I found one in a driveway on my way home one morning.  I thought my daughter, who was home sick, and I would take care of him until my son came home.  We learned about caring for snails and the next day decided to buy a little tank, find him a friend, and keep him for a bit.  I found that while I was gathering food for our snails, I was learning about conservation.  I could give them peels of carrots and ends of veggies that might have otherwise been thrown away.

my stock pile with peels, stems, and greens

And that is how keeping snails led me to begin making chicken and vegetable stock from food scraps.

For some time I have been meaning to start saving vegetable scraps that could be used to make soup stock.  However, it wasn't until I started keeping snails that I really started paying attention to what was worth saving.

Stinging Nettle Soup - Picking Edible Weeds

The second time I met Hannah K. of Cooking Manager, we were walking home from a class last winter and she started pointing out all these edible weeds along the side of the road.  I wasn't sure what to think.  Was she a new-age hippie?  Did everyone in Israel eat weeds?  Miriam Kresh of Israeli Kitchen had just taught Hannah about edible weeds and her eyes were peeled for the species she learned to pick.  Now I've known Hannah a little over a year and I've come to learn that she is quite balanced, most Israeli's buy their produce in a store, and weeds taste great!

For the last few weeks I've been noticing many edible-looking weeds as I walked around town, and I kept meaning to look at Hannah's old post on Green Prophet "Five Edible Wild Plants You Can Pick Yourself".  The last time she came by, I mentioned it to her, and she showed me lots of edible mallows, nettle, chick weed, and one "chamtzitz" flower, right around our building!

Easy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

DISCLAIMER: Maybe I had a really good squash. I can't promise your soup will be as amazing as mine.

Odds & Ends Afterlife: Five Bean Soup

Last week I made a hearty. delicious soup while shooting the most boring 15 minutes of video footage known to man.  I kept the soup and scrapped 13.5 minutes of video.  I added salt to the remaining 2.5 minutes, and here it is:


video url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f94nRxNeU_0

Soup is a great way to use up little bits of grains or legumes that aren't enough for a full serving.

Hearty Lentil Soup

Today I am making soup for a family in our community who is sitting shiva.  Our condolences to the family and friends of Nechama Gittel Chaya (Norma) Kuras.  I've always thought my lentil soup is very comforting, but this is the first time it will really be put to the test. 

In addition, this is the first time I am making it with dry lentils (not canned) and without store-bought broth.  If you want to use those time-savers. see Easy Lentil Soup.

Some other things I'm doing differentley include using my food processor to thinly slice the veggies, and cooking two kind of lentils separately.  Lets get started!

1. Chop 2 onions, 3-4 carrots, and 1 celery root/celeriac or parsnip (both optional), and 1 sweet potato/yam (also optional, but tasty) and start them cooking with oil in a pot.

2. Add a sprinkling of flour, celery, mushrooms, and tomatoes. to the pan.

Salmon Chowder

I'm no vegetarian, but if a creature is killed to be our dinner, we should treat it with respect and use as much of it as we can.  When I lived in America, I never bought a fish with the skeleton included, but now I buy fresh fish at the market where I decide what to do with it.  If I ask my fish monger to fillet it, I usually receive the head and skeleton in the bag.  I was quite surprised the first time this happened, but of course, I had to find a way to use it!

OVERVIEW: The first time I made this I had a chunk of salmon skeleton and two full small tilapia skeletons.  I boiled all the raw remains with chunks of potatoes.  When the fish looked well cooked I fished it out (excused the pun) and threw in other vegetables and herbs.  I may have also added fresh or a can of stewed tomatoes.  I blended the soup, then picked the cooked skeletons clean and put the meat back in the soup.

Pumpkin (or squash) Soup & Easy Lentil Soup

I thought I would share the following two non-recipes I wrote down for my Aunt Nan after I made it when she was visiting last Thanksgiving.  I actually served it in the toasted hollowed out pumpkin.  In America I had more tools and seasoning.  Here in Israel, I just bought a food processor and I don't use boxed broth.

I scraped out all the meat from the pumpkin (or roast the squash until you can peel off the skin easily) (toss the seeds). For Pumpkin - I would start this roasting in the oven if you have that available, but you'll need a really big pan (otherwise just add raw and cook longer).  Then I fried up 3 chopped carrots, 3 stalks of celery, I think 1-2 onions, a couple cloves of garlic, mushrooms and anything else you want (less for smaller squash).  When it's soft, add more oil and flour (I guess this is optional, but I like the flavor it adds to creamy, non-dairy soups.)  I use grapeseed oil, canola is fine.  Let the flour cook and keep scraping the bottom.  Add a little broth now if it's sticking too much.  Add the pumpkin (if it's still raw, it just takes longer)  Here I added a whole carton of "Imagine No-chicken broth", but you could use other liquids, and scrape up all the flour.  Add any fresh herbs like thyme, sage, or rosemary.  My soup comes out a little greenish, but it's yummy, use less herbs if this would bother you.  While it's cooking/simmering add other seasonings.  I like to pull my spices out and sniff them to decide on a good combination, but for this soup, I used a mix of savory (listed above) and sweeter: nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice...  Sea salt, a little fresh ground pepper or chili pepper, I added a drop of honey and agave syrup...You could probably get away with less or different ingredients, I'm just trying to remember what I did.  When everything if soft and smells good, blend with a hand blender or in food processor.

For an easy lentil soup:  You start as above, but skip the sweet flavorings, and use fresh thyme or lavender (leaves only) and definitely use flour.  You will use about 2 cans of lentils (I like the organic red lentils), but blend after adding only half a can and all the spices.  You can blend out a few chunks or random areas at the end, but I like the mouth feel of having a creamy soup with lentils still intact.

A delicious variation I just tried was more Indian style I used more fresh garlic, lots of Cumin, chili powder, a little ginger, and cinnamon, and a can of tomatoes (added in the beginning and completely blended).  Good luck!

You might also like: Hearty Lentil Soup

Butternut Squash Soup

This evening I made butternut squash soup.  Next time I'll try to take better pictures, but I only decided to start this blog after my husband said, "WOW this is so amazing I have goose bumps."

This afternoon I asked my husband to stick the butternut squash in the oven, not knowing what it might become.  I think it was in there a couple hours.  I only remembered about it and pulled it out after I smelled something burning.

After I put the kids to bed (and the squash was cooling) I fried up two carrots, a medium onion, and two cloves of garlic (with canola oil), followed by some baby-bella mushrooms, a tablespoon of margarine, and a tablespoon of flour.  After it was getting all sticky a brown I added some beer.  Normally I'd opt for veggie or chicken broth, but we've had this single beer in the house a couple weeks, and no other appropriate liquids. 

Then I added some more water, maybe 1.5 cups, and the squash, peeled, no seeds.  I let that simmer while I seasoned it with a little black pepper, quality powdered ginger, paprika, and cinnamon.  Salt and fresh herbs would be good, but I just realized I forgot salt, and I didn't have herbs.  Honey or a couple pinches of sugar would also work, but taste to make sure your squash needs it.  I used my food processor to smooth it out, then brought it to my sick hubby in bed and got the reaction above.

This would freeze well.  You can add some water and reheat it on the stove.  You could garnish with roasted sunflower or squash seeds, fried thyme, a dash of paprika, a drop of sour cream...

You might also like Easy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup.