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Having roasted a chicken the other night (using my favorite recipe from the NYT - Mark Bittman's "30 minute" high-heat version), I've come full circle to chicken noodle. Normally (as in, before last month) I would have just made plain old chicken noodle, but the pressure/pleasure of sharing the results in a blog got me thinking about other variations. Also, I had a very satisfying bowl of wonton soup at Thaiku (in Ballard) yesterday, which made me think about Asian noodle soups, which led me to concoct the following variation on a theme:
1/2 med onion, sliced thinly
1/2 Tbs. butter or vegetable oil
3-4 slices of fresh ginger, peeled
1 bunch black kale (or any green, really), thinly sliced
2/3 of a leftover chicken, bones used for stock, sliced
1 1/2 qts (or so) chicken stock
1/3 lb. (or so) udon noodles or fettucine, cooked according to package instructions, drained and rinsed with cold water
1/2 tsp. sesame oil
Salt to taste
In a large pot, saute onion in the butter until it's slightly carmelized. Add ginger and kale, saute for a few minutes, then fill pot about 1/2 full with stock. Bring to a simmer and let simmer for about 10 minutes (time this step to coincide with cooking the noodles). Add chicken and let soup come back to a simmer. Add noodles, cook for a few minutes to re-warm, then stir in sesame oil. Check for salt. Serve in a big bowl with chopsticks to slurp up the noodles with!
I had a craving for beets yesterday - probably because my stomach has been bugging me in the last few days, and beets usually help balance my digestion...
Oddly enough, I don't remember eating borscht at home as a kid - at least not hot borscht. We often had saltibarsciai - cold beet soup - in the summer, a pepto-bismal-pink, buttermilk-based soup that's delicious and refreshing when you don't want to turn the stove on. That said, I never ate it when I was younger because I hated beets. Now they're one of my favorite vegetables - I love their earthy sweetness. I think they taste like dirt, but in a good way!
So I wanted to make barsciai (to use the Lithuanian) yesterday, and poked around in various cookbooks and online to find a recipe that looked good. A lot of recipes called for beef broth - either canned or homemade - which I didn't have, nor did it make sense to me to make broth outside of the soup-making process, especially since I had time to invest in cooking. I wound up following this recipe for Ukranian borscht, more or less: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/6008 - key differences being: adding the meat back in with the potatoes (the recipe leaves it cooling on the counter) and swapping out the raw garlic for sauteed. I also was agressive about skimming the fat - I put the broth in the freezer until the fat had solidified. I find fatty broth totally unappetizing.
The results were great! Sweet, meaty, tangy from the lemon juice - and plentiful leftovers. The allspice in the broth reminds me of my great-aunt's soups...
