This essay is a divergence from the usual Pickle Prattle. I am trying to convince the PDN to publish a local foods column and I wrote this as a sample. As Marchwinds down and negotiations are on-going, this peice will soon be out of season – so here you are:
Yesterday on our way home from school my nearly teenage daughter and I were having a serious agreement. Despite our cultural and age differences we were both complaining about the cold March rain pounding the windshield. I sneezed and she listed off the friends at school who were planning to go someplace warm for spring break. For goodness sake, the equinox is next week, the days are getting longer, daffodils are blooming but there is slush on my shoes and I feel a cold coming on. So what’s a northwest denizen to do?
Well, I know what I am going to do … start a pot of chicken soup. There is nothing that improves a blustery, damp cold spring evening like a steamy pot of soup simmering on the stove. It’s the Penicillin in a Bowl that everybody’s grandmother has always known about. Recently some medical research has confirmed that real broth does have an anti-inflammatory effect and can speed recovery from the common cold.
I grew up on a variety of wonderful soups. My mother swore that the secret to her soup was the turnip, a backyard staple in my grandfather’s vegetable patch. But it wasn’t until well into my adulthood that I actually learned the truth about a great soup stock. The vegetables are important, but really, it’s all about the bones.
I start with a whole chicken, or sometimes the leftover skin and bones from a roasted bird. Place that in a pot with some aromatic vegetables, a little salt, pepper and enough water to cover everything. This takes 5 minutes. Imagine that I’m one of those TV parents whipping up a packaged dinner in the time it takes to tie his or her shoelaces. Starting a pot of soup is just as easy. Except, that instead of getting out my reading glasses to study a lengthy ingredient list, I have to touch raw meat and chop the butt end off a carrot.
The perfect vegetables for soup include the aromatic roots (turnip, rutabaga, parsnip, spring onions) and greens like mustard, celery, parsley and arugula; all of which are in season right now and were for sale at the PA farmer’s market last Saturday. It’s uncanny how the soil tends to provide just what we need.
Now, back to the kitchen. Once you get your pot loaded, gently simmer on the stove or in a crockpot for a couple of hours while you go about your business … like make that quick dinner you had in mind for tonight anyway. Once the meat softens, turn off the heat and cool. Now comes the only hard and sometimes messy part: strain out the solid pieces. My preferred method is to pour the still warm, but not scalding broth through a spaghetti strainer – but you can be inventive depending on what equipment you have on hand. By all means do this over the sink! And do it before the rest of your family members wash the dishes so they can wipe up any splatters you might have caused.
Refrigerate the broth overnight. The fat will come to the surface and the liquid will thicken into a gel. This is perfectly normal and is a sign that your stock includes animal collagen and other valuable nutrients. If you want you can easily skim off the fat. Add back the veggies and the meat (without the skin and bones.) Add whatever herbs and fresh veggies you like and Voila! Chicken Soup like grandma’s – good for the body and soul.
