Saturday, September 11, 2010

Chicken soup for may sick baby

Ok, She's not my baby anymore - she's 11 going on 25, but she's my first and she'll always be my baby' and she was sick this week.  So what do I do?  I go to work fixing food to cure her - specifically, chicken soup and fruit salad and homemade bread. 
I'm in my new house and a new kitchen, and things are still in boxes, but I have my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, and my recipe book holder out and ready to go.
The first thing I did was put together some bread dough so that I could fry up some naan to dip in the soup.  One of Cordelia's favorite things in the world in naan - I figured she could use some good comfort food.
Then I started in on the chicken stock. Which included:
1 5lb chicken
1 1/2 white onions quartered
1 turnip - halved
2 carrots, cut in chunks
3 ribs celery, cut in chunks
a handful of flat leaf parsley
a bunch of fresh thyme
1 whole head of garlic, halved
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tbsp kosher salt
1/2 inch fresh peeled ginger
6 whole allspice
1/2 tsp dried dill
enough water to just cover it all.
I boiled all of this for 1 and a half hours. 
And ended up with this
In the mean time, I threw this together:
Fruit is always good for a cold - and my youngest LOVES her fruit.
Then I put the soup together.
The soup included all of the stock I had made and:
2 tbsp olive oil to saute' (for about 6 minutes)
1 medium onion
3 cloves of minced garlic
2 medium chopped carrots
2 chopped celery ribs
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
I then put in my stock and cooked  the veggies for about 5 minutes then added thin egg noodles that I got from the Jewish food section of Safeway and cooked those for 10 minutes.  Then I stirred in the chicken meat I had stripped and shredded from the whole chicken I had cooked in the stock earlier. I then put in a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley and I tossed in some kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.  And this is what I ended up with:
It was delicious and enough for about 12 people - The girls LOVED it especially with warm naan right out of the skillet to dip in the soup.  I ended up with enough for lunch for a couple of days, fed a couple friends at work with it, and have some saved for my love when he comes out to see me for Christmas in December.  I hope it's still good when he gets here, I know my Okiefied friend said it was the best chicken soup she ever had.  That was quite a complement. 

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