Monday, October 18, 2010

Sunday Soup

I love the rotisserie chickens that seem to be in every store.  I think I probably don't want to know alot about the chicken's credentials , but they are so useful and delicious.  Sticky tender and well seasoned, I usually get at least two dinners out of them.  First, I might make a chicken pot pie or chicken with dumplings, then next round will be chicken enchiladas and then, with the bones, my favorite: soup.
I take the bones with any drippings from the container ,add onion, carrots,celery,bay leaf and lots of garlic, cover with water and maybe a glass of white wine for depth and bring it to a boil. I let it simmer till rich and strain out all the solids.  Last night I craved the  Greek soup Avgolemono

, enriched with beaten eggs and lemon.  So next, I added some thawed chicken breast from the freezer. Double strength soup.  Mmmm.  Once that was cooked, I removed it and chopped it roughly, adding it back to the soup with 2 cups of white rice from the night before and a handful of chopped parsley.  It was a large pot of soup, so I put three eggs into a bowl and beat them with an electric mixer till they were thick and frothy.  Then, ( I like it lemony ) I added the juice of 4 medium lemons and beat that into my egg mixture. Scooping about a cup of hot soup into a measuring cup, I slowly streamed it into my egg mixture as I beat away.  Once that's incorporated,  I  poured it all into the soup pot and stirred it on low heat, just for a minute.  Salt, pepper, a squeeze more of lemon ( because nothing is ever lemony enough for me ) and  a loaf of La Brea Bakery bread, and Django and I had silky soup and warm bread dipped in seasoned olive oil curled up on the couch watching nonsense on T.V.

7 comments:

  1. You should post a warning on your recipes - dangerously fattening, even when read!

    And I look forward to the podcast eagerly.

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  2. My girlfriend (Greek/Italian, born in Egypt-yes, i have to be VERY quiet at times) makes this often. She eats it with pita/Lebanese-style bread, though

    Fortunately, we can track down good, free-range chicken easily. The flavour is almost always better & it's easier to eat something you know has lived properly

    With regards
    Robert

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  3. Maybe you're quiet because you're eating!:)
    Sounds like she's a good cook!

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  4. She's an excellent cook, particularly when she taps into her food heritage (her Alexandrian recipes are wonderful). But she can get intense at times, particularly when she thinks she's being wronged. The seven against Thebes have to call for reinforcements

    Vaguely recall a character in a favourite TV show who was like that; but for the life of me i can't remember who that was....

    With regards
    Robert

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  5. This soup sounds heavenly-it's moving to soup weather here in the midwest. The leaves are falling and there's a slight chill in the air.

    You know, one thing I miss about the East Coast is the breads; we always got our bread from this bakery or that, depending on what their specialty was. It was not unusual to go to 3 different stores for 3 different types of bread.

    It's not the same here now.


    I am going to try that Pretzel Roll recipe soon!

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  6. the only thing I miss about the east coast is a decent kaiser roll - crispy, crunchy, hard on the outside, nice & chewy inside. couldn't find any in LA, either.

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  7. Murphey: Exactly! Hard crunchy on the outside! When we go to NYC to visit family, I could literally live on bread and soup.

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