German Style Chicken Soup with Spaetzle

I'm really quite proud of this soup.  Not because it's particularly difficult to make or requires intricate processes, but because it means I have made the most of a plump chicken.  It always pains me terribly to throw away the carcass of a roast chicken, as - in the days before I had room in my freezer for chicken stock - I very often had to. 

To start at the beginning, we had a good old traditional roast chicken for our Sunday dinner and quite apart from the three roast dinners it made, there was leftover breast meat, plus the leftover little taggy bits of meat (which are destined to be divided between a ramen noodle lunch and a chicken sandwich) and of course, the skeletal remains of the carcass.  So, feeling all worthy and ambitious, I included a chicken noodle soup for the following day.

I see so many gorgeous looking chicken soups, made from scratch, go past on various Facebook groups that I really felt I was missing out - and the blog was missing out - on not having a great chicken soup recipe.  Well, this evening fixed that one!

Yes, it is a bit of work, but with my trusty pressure cooker I was able to make the stock for the soup in a fraction of the time it would have taken without it - and without giving myself nightmares that always happens when I make stock using the slow cooker and leave it on overnight.  True, the pressure cooker does scare me but in years of using them only one has ever blown up (when I was living on the boat.  It blew the valve and painted the inside of the wheelhouse with boiling linseed that I was cooking for my horses' tea.  I had to put up an umbrella to go turn the burner off and rescue us) and nowadays they have inbuilt mechanisms that make them considerably safer to use.

Once the stock is made, cooled and de-greased, it is a simple matter of a bit of chopping and a-peeling, then simply chucking stuff into the saucepan and watching it cook.  Oh and tasting it get better and better, of course.

The spaetzle, I have to admit, came from Lidl.  Yes, I know people are going to tell me that it's so much nicer/tastier if you make your own, but I was curious about this dried egg spaetzle, okay?  As it turned out, it went superbly in this soup and provided the substance that otherwise would have been lacking.  Took FOR EVER to cook though - so bear that in mind if you get a similar product.  Their 10-11 minutes was closer to an actual 15-20.

I served the soup with simple buttered crusty bread rolls and it was perfect.  I consider us to now be immune to all cold and flu viruses for at least the next month, as this kind of soup is very well known to cure all known ills.  I'll have to spread a spoonful across the bank statement and see if it can cure the bank balance.  *wink*

Now as far as Cook's Tips go, I really only have one which is more of a warning than a tip.  For all that the making of the stock from a roast chicken carcass is time consuming and a tiny bit gross (to some people, I didn't find it so), it really is worth it.  A stock cube is a supremely useful thing, but it can't take the place of this liquid gold.  As I did, you can always add commercially produced stock to increase the liquid content, but you won't be able to find the depth of sheer chicken flavour - not even from the very best commercially produced chicken stock.  So go that extra mile and make the most of your roast chicken carcass.  You'll be so glad you did!

GERMAN STYLE CHICKEN SOUP WITH SPAETZLE   (serves 3)

Ingredients :

For the stock

A roast chicken carcass, stripped of all useful meat but including all the ghastly bits you would normally throw away : skin, fat, gristle, bones - the lot
2 carrots, peeled if they're a bit gnarly or dirty, sliced into chunks
1 large brown onion, peeled and quartered
1 garlic clove, peeled but left whole
2 large celery sticks, cleaned and with feathery leaves left on, sliced into chunks
1 large handful of fresh parsley, stalks included
half a tsp of dried thyme
a pinch of sea salt
half a tsp of ground black pepper
1 tsp of vegetable stock powder, dissolved into 1 litre of hot water.

For the soup

1 litre of home made chicken stock
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 potato, peeled and diced
2 celery sticks, de-strung and chopped into similar size pieces as the carrot & potato
1 small parsnip, peeled and diced
2 tsp good low salt chicken stock powder (to taste - you may require less or more)
500ml hot water
half a tsp of ground black pepper
two fistfuls of dried Spaetzle
a good handful of petit pois
1 tbsp plain flour, mixed into 50ml warm water
150g minimum of roast chicken meat, chopped into bite sized pieces
chopped fresh parsley, for garnish.

Method :

To make the chicken stock, place all the ingredients into a pressure cooker and give it all a quick stir.  Fix on the lid and place over the heat to come up to pressure.  Cook at medium pressure for 20 minutes, then de-pressurise and remove the lid.

The stock can also be made, using the same ingredients, by cooking for a minimum of 8 hours in a slow cooker, or the good old fashioned way of simmering it all in a huge pan on the stove top, for as long as you can bear it.  Just remember to keep an eye on the liquid level if you opt for this method.

Drain the liquid through a sieve over a large bowl or jug (don't make the schoolboy error of forgetting to catch the stock!) and set aside to cool.  You should have at least a litre of stock.  The solids can all be discarded once cool.

Once the stock is cool, you will find that the fat has accumulated on the top.  Skim the fat off using a spoon - you don't have to be exact, just get rid of the worst of it.  The stock is now ready to make soup with.

Pour your stock into a large soup saucepan and add the carrots.  Bring the contents up to the boil, then reduce to a lively simmer and cook for some 3-4 minutes.

Add the potato, celery, parsnip, chicken stock powder (how much depends on how strong your stock flavour is) and the additional hot water and black pepper.  Stir everything in well and bring back up to a lively simmer.  Cook until the carrots are tender.

Using a potato masher, break up some of the vegetable pieces, leaving the majority intact.  Taste for chickeniness (if it's a bit pale in flavour you can either leave the lid off and reduce the soup, taking care to leave enough to feed everyone, or add a little more chicken stock powder - but remember that the chicken meat has to be added yet) and for pepper and salt.  This is when you find yourself very happy you were using a low salt stock powder!

Add the spaetzle to the soup and continue to cook at a lively simmer until the noodles are al dente.

Add the petit pois and the flour slurry, making sure to stir it in very well.  This will thicken the soup.  If you would like the soup to be thicker, simply add more flour slurry but take care to cook the rawness out of the flour.

When you are happy with the texture of your soup and the noodles are soft, add the chicken meat and heat through well.  Once the soup has returned to a lively simmer, remove from the heat and serve into warmed bowls.  Add a good sprinkle of chopped fresh parsley to each bowl as garnish and serve with warm crusty bread.

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Chestnut & aubergine stew - big, punchy flavours.

I seem to be having a bit of a Mediterranean leaning at the moment where cooking is concerned.  So much so that everything seems to have at least one red pepper in it and my olive oil stocks are depleting rapidly.

It has even crept into my Sunday dinner plans.  You see, we're currently shopping at Lidl as our primary supermarket - they've just opened a nice big store quite close by where you can get most things and what you can't get, you can either stop at Sainsbury's (if you go home one way) or Tesco (if you go home the other!) for.  Now Lidl has a regular weekly special offer on four items of fruit/vegetable and four items of meat/fish, which I keep in mind when it comes to creating the menu plan.  Hence, the pork being part of the special offer dealio was why I was focused on roast pork loin for our Sunday dinner this week.  I'm going to have to buy another piece and do a blog post on successful roasting of pork loin with rosemary and sumac, because it was by far and away the nicest piece of pork we've had in a long time.

Anyway, I digress.  I didn't want to do a standard roast pork with all the trimmings, as that is so much up and downing to the oven that I'm exhausted by the end of it.  No, this week I thought I'd couple it with delicious sweet potato and nutmeg (with outrageous amounts of butter) mash and some kind of vegetable stew.

Now I know that the name "vegetable stew" is an instant turn-off for a lot of people and understand why.  However, the stew I wanted to create wouldn't be that dull and boring.  Oh no. It was to have deliciousness like red onion, saffron, chestnuts and aubergine in there, along with the carrots and mushrooms and all in a delicious richly sweet tomato sauce.  Oh alright, it also had a red pepper.  I admit, I couldn't resist.

Now you may raise your eyebrows at the idea of humble chestnuts along with such exotic ingredients as saffron and aubergine, but the phrase "they were brought in by the Romans, don'cha know?" (the chestnuts, that is) was all the encouragement I required to place them in what turned out to be a very appropriate recipe.

You will need a fair old amount of time to create this stew because, well, it's a stew.  It needs time to hubble, to bubble, to toil and well hopefully not create trouble, but to cook all those ingredients to a stage where they're all very good friends.  It needs to stew.  It's no good throwing all the ingredients into a pot and hoping for the best, although you would get something more closely resembling a weak soup.

However, your reward for that time spent stirring (plus lifting the lid hopefully and having a wee soupcon as a taste - which is essential, of course) is such an unusual and delicious accompaniment to just about every meat and fish that's on the planet (bearing in mind I've not tried them all, but of those I have tried ...).  It would even be brilliant with eggs.  Perhaps a little odd as an accompaniment for a pineapple cheesecake, so let's just stay with the savouries, I think.

Anyway, as you will see from the photographs, I paired mine with the roast loin of pork (which I roasted for 35mins per pound, plus 35 mins, at 180degC/350degF/Gas4 covered for the first hour then uncovered for the rest, if that helps) and the sweet potato mash.  The combination made for an excellent Sunday dinner that made a lovely change from the standard roasties etc.

A closer look at that roast pork because, well, it deserves it.

So, whether you're choosing to eat it with roast pork, sausages, or salmon, I just hope that you like it as much as we did!

CHESTNUT & AUBERGINE STEW     (Serves 4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp plus 2 tbsp olive oil (used separately)
1 small aubergine, diced
1 red onion, finely diced
2 big garlic cloves, sliced finely
2 carrots, peeled and sliced thinly
1 medium red pepper, cored and sliced
a pinch of sea salt
half a tsp ground black pepper
2 large tomatoes, tough cores removed and diced
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 pinch of saffron strands
a quarter of one preserved lemon, sliced into fine shreds
300ml hot water
1 heaped tsp of chicken stock powder (or 1 stock cube)
90g halved chestnuts (I use Merchant Gourmet brand)
5 large white mushrooms, quartered
1 tsp runny honey (if required)
2 tbsp fresh Basil leaves, torn
1 tbsp fresh Parsley leaves, chopped, for garnish.

Method :

Heat the one tablespoonful of olive oil in a large, deep frying pan or wok until very hot.  Gently add the diced aubergine and fry until quite deeply coloured on at least three sides.  Remove the aubergine from the pan and set aside.

Heat the two tablespoonfuls of olive oil to a moderate heat and add the red onion, garlic, carrots and red pepper with the sea salt & black pepper.  Cook until the onion is softened, then add the diced tomatoes, tomato puree and saffron.  Stir occasionally until the tomatoes are beginning to break down.

Add the preserved lemon shreds, hot water and stock and stir through.  Bring to a simmer, cover with a lid and cook - stirring every so often - for around 20-30 minutes until the tomatoes have broken down completely and the carrots are al dente.

Add the aubergine, chestnuts and mushrooms and stir through.  Replace the lid and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Taste for seasoning and add the honey if the sauce seems acidic.

Remove the lid and allow the liquid to evaporate, until the sauce has become thick and is covering the vegetables and the carrots are cooked through - around another 10 minutes or so.

Finally, stir in the torn basil leaves and serve, sprinkling with a little fresh parsley as garnish.

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