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.

Printable version

Singapore style Chicken Fried Rice (or "using up roast chicken")

We had the most amazing chicken for dinner on Sunday.  My chicken brick (which I have yet to tell you about, but is the best thing that has ever happened to my roast chickens) did its job and produced a succulent, soft and beautifully roasted bird that was just so intensely chickeny.

Having eaten our fill from the chicken for Sunday dinner, we were left with the other half of it for Monday's meal.  Now, once again, I was avoiding involving potatoes (half as a personal challenge to make a succession of meals that didn't involve potatoes and half because hubby has REALLY had enough of them) so all the "with potato" casseroles or "chicken in a wrap with potato wedges" options were out.

We hadn't had a rice dish all week - I know, how remarkable was that! - so I began thinking down ricey routes.  As I was strolling through various recipe sites on t'internet, I saw one for a Singapore style rice dish, which used both Thai curry paste and Indian curry powder.  Now that got me thinking, as I knew I had both in the fridge from previous curries.  I knew how to make a very (also known as VERY) acceptable, nay yumalicious, fried rice dish in my gorgeous Nasi Goreng, so perhaps some adaptation of that recipe might produce something along the Singapore lines, but I had to make sure it didn't just wind up like Nasi Goreng minus the prawns.

My chicken brick, with roasted chicken.

I know a little bit about Singapore (I was born in Malaysia, remember?) and know that it is a real melting pot of nationalities.  Hence, I wasn't bothered about mixing genres of ingredients for this dish.  Ultimately, I wound up with English roast chicken, Thai curry paste and fish sauce, Indian curry paste and rice, Japanese rice wine, Chinese soy sauce and bean sprouts - and some fresh coriander, which just about every country seems to have available, these days!

I can tell you what, it only worked!  In fact, it worked really well and was almost verging upon the epic.  I now have a new recipe to add to the stable of Nasi Goreng and Kedgeree.  In fact, I could quite see my cycling through the three without ever getting fed up with any of them!

Now if you've ever made my Nasi Goreng, you'll know that it really isn't tricky to make - it's simply a matter of chopping stuff, then tipping it into a wok and cooking it in the correct order for the correct time at the correct heat.  This, dear reader, is even quicker than that.  Because there are no prawns or mushrooms to worry about and the chicken is already cooked, plus the beansprouts and peas cook themselves as you go, it all came together with 15 minutes to go before I was due to ring the dinner bell.  Mind you, not that anyone was complaining - the lovely smells had raised them from their various occupations rather like Bisto kids, following their noses!

Everyone liked it, everyone enjoyed it, everyone would have eaten more if we could have fitted it in.  Son and heir was seriously considering having seconds, but decided it was an "eyes bigger than belly" situation.  Hubby has every intention of having more for breakfast and I have every intention of having more for lunch tomorrow.  I can see I'll have to separate out the leftovers into separate bowls!

The upshot of it all is, if you have the other half of a roast chicken available and don't know what to do with it, plus, if you fancy a really quick, tasty meal, then this fried rice is for you.

Would I do anything differently?  Well, I might be tempted to add some sliced water chestnuts, but that's about it.

SINGAPORE STYLE CHICKEN FRIED RICE   (serves 4-5)

Ingredients :

2-300g Basmati rice
2 eggs, lightly whipped
salt & pepper
2 individual knobs of butter
1 tbsp groundnut oil
a bunch (6 or 7) of spring onions , cleaned and chopped diagonally
3 fat cloves of garlic, chopped finely
2 heaped tsp of red Thai curry paste
2 heaped tsp of mild Indian curry paste
a couple of handfuls of frozen peas (still frozen)
a pinch of dried red chilli flakes, to taste
3 big handfuls of fresh bean sprouts
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp mirrin (Japanese Rice Wine)
a quantity of cold roasted chicken, shredded (half a chicken works for me!)
a large handful of fresh coriander, chopped.

Method :

1.  Cook the basmati rice according to the instructions on the packet, but stop the cooking a fraction before it is done, leaving a slight bite in the rice.  Drain it well and run under the cold tap to cool.  Leave in the colander or sieve to drain well, but place it back into the saucepan and put the lid on top to prevent the rice from drying out.

2.  Using a deep frying pan or wok, melt one of the knobs of butter and add half the seasoned egg mixture.  Roll the pan to spread the egg out thinly and cook to form a thin omelette, flip over to cook the other side.  Do the same again with the remainder of the egg mixture, then roll the two together to form a tube and cut into shreds.   Reserve to keep warm.

3.  Add the oil to the remains of the butter and heat until really quite hot and add the spring onions.  Stir and fry until slightly softened, just a minute or so. 

4.  Add the garlic and continue to stir and fry for another 30 seconds, taking care not to let it stick to the bottom of the pan or colour.

5.  Add the two curry pastes and stir well.  Cook for some 2-3 mins.

6.  Add the frozen peas, chilli flakes and bean sprouts and toss them to combine them with the mix.

7.  Add the soy sauce, fish sauce and mirrin and reduce the heat to prevent it burning.  Continue to cook (1-2 minutes) until a sticky and thick consistency has been achieved.

8.  Add the chicken and stir through to coat it in the sauce, quickly followed by the chopped coriander and the rice.  At this stage, you're just heating the chicken and rice through, not cooking anything, so keep the heat high enough to do the job - but not blazing!

9.  Stir or toss the rice to combine it and prevent it from sticking to the pan. 

10.  Add the omelette strips, stir through lightly and serve. 

Printable version  

A "how to" guide : Roast Chicken with Lemon & Herbs

Hubby and I were pondering on what to have for Sunday lunch the other day, when it occurred to me that there has to be more than a few people out there who really don't know where to start with preparing a Sunday lunch.

This is why we thought we'd work our way through various Sunday roast joints over the course of the year and prepare a "how to" guide for them as we go.  I'll also include various vegetable side dishes such as roast potatoes etc. too.


So for those of you who know how to roast a chicken, don't think I'm patronising you.  This post is not for you.  ~wags finger~  For those of you who have found your way here to find out how to roast a chicken, read on!


Roasting a chicken is one of the easiest Sunday Roasts you can opt for.  Chickens are really quite forgiving things, so long as you don't leave them in the oven for way over the recommended time and dry them out - or alternatively, take them out too soon and serve pink chicken (which could land everyone up in hospital).  Undercooked chicken really is one of the most common causes of food poisoning - so it's worthwhile ensuring that your chicken is cooked through.  Once upon a time, you were told to pierce the meat of the thigh and observe the colour of the juice which emerged.  For me, this isn't a good enough test.  I much prefer to pull the whole leg away from the body and peer into the gap to see what colour the juices are.  If there is any slightest hint of pink - put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes.  If there is the slightest doubt as to whether there is pink there or not - put it back anyway.  You so don't want to be visiting A&E accompanied by a bucket.


I must say a few words about stuffing, as we're talking about food hygiene here.  If you're a novice at roasting a chicken, prepare your stuffing and cook it in a separate dish.  It tastes just as good and doesn't come complete with globby bits of cooked blood, the sight of which used to turn me over when I was a child - and doesn't do much for me now, either.

The difficulty with stuffing a chicken is that because the stuffing fills the body cavity, the hot air from the oven can't penetrate into the chicken so easily.  Hence, it takes a good half an hour longer to cook than an unstuffed bird would.  That half an hour can easily make the difference between a lovely juicy chicken dinner and some dried out chicken sawdust for dinner.  If you must put something inside your chicken, make it a couple of bay leaves, a small bouquet of herbs or a lemon.  Better still, why not make hubby's recipe below, which just can't help but be succulent and gorgeous!

Now then, let's assume you've roasted your chicken and had your roast dinner.  On your worktop sits the remains of the chicken, glowering at you.  Don't throw it in the bin!  Oh my heart is having palpitations at the very idea.  No, no, get yourself a bowl, a sharp knife, a freezer bag and maybe a dog bowl if you own a dog, plus some kitchen paper with which to wipe your hands.  Separate off any - and I'm talking any - meat from the carcass, to put in the bowl as even little tiny scraps of meat can go into a sandwich or into some soup.  Remember to look under the chicken, as there are two choice pads of meat to be found under there (known as the "oysters").  As you find pieces that you recoil at eating (such as skin), you have to decide whether to a) put them in the dog bowl, or b) put them into the freezer bag with any bones you come across.  Don't give the dog roast chicken bones (other than wing tips and the parson's nose) as they can splinter and damage your dog's throat and digestive tract.  That freezer bag full of bones and yukky bits can be hidden away in the fridge until the following day, when you can chop up a celery stick, an onion, a clove or two of garlic - and make some gorgeous chicken stock.

The bowl of leftover chicken can be used for a myriad of recipes - not just a sandwich or soup - such as Coronation Chicken, Chicken Wraps, Spicy Chicken Rice - the world is your leftover chicken oyster.

So, enough yapping about it, let's get on and make that roast chicken :


ROAST CHICKEN WITH LEMON & HERBS

Ingredients for the herb butter :

60g salted butter at room temperature
6 Sage leaves
1 Sprig of Rosemary
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp Thyme
half tsp Chives
half clove Garlic

Simply mince the herbs and garlic as finely as possible before combining with the butter. Form the mixture into two patties, cover and chill slightly in the fridge, taking care not to let them get hard.

Ingredients for the Chicken :

1 Medium Chicken
Herb Butter
1 Lemon
2 Bay leaves
Salt and Pepper

Ingredients for the Gravy :

Chicken Juices
One and a half tablespoons plain flour
A splash of Sherry

150ml boiling water.

Method :

1.  Wash the chicken, inside and out under cold running water.  Pat dry with kitchen paper, then using your fingers, gently make a pocket over the chicken breast by easing the skin away from the meat.  Try to make the pocket as large as possible but take care not to tear the skin.  Insert the herb butter patties into the pocket, easing the butter as far over the breast as possible.

2.  Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice all over the skin on the chicken before inserting both halves and the two bay leaves into the chicken's cavity.  Season the chicken liberally with salt and pepper but do salt the legs as this can make them dry.

3.  Place the chicken into a lightly oiled baking dish, cover with baking foil and then put into an oven, pre-heated to 180 degrees C.  Cook for 30 minutes before removing the foil and returning to the oven for a further 45 minutes (or more, depending on the size of the chicken).  During this second phase of cooking, baste the chicken every 15 minutes or so with the cooking juices.

4.  At the end of the cooking time, pull one of the thighs away from the body and check that the juices in the gap are running clear.  Any sign of pink and return the chicken to the oven for another 15 minutes.  Assuming all's well, take the chicken from the roasting dish, place on a carving board and cover with foil for ten minutes to rest.

5.  While the chicken is resting, spoon out the worst of the fat from the roasting dish, then place over a medium heat and bring the juices to a simmer.  Add a splash of sherry or white wine to deglaze the pan and then stir in one and a half tablespoons of plain flour.  Stir vigorously to remove any lumps and then add 100ml of water or chicken stock.  Keep stirring until the mixture is smooth before transferring to a small saucepan.  While simmering and stirring the gravy, add more water or stock until your preferred consistency is reached.  Season to taste and then pour into a warmed gravy dish.

6.  Carve and serve the chicken with a selection of vegetables and of course, Yorkshire puddings.  Stuffing can be prepared and cooked in a separate dish, if required.

.
 

From Carbonara to Pirozhki

That's our menu list for this week!

Spaghetti Carbonara
Same recipe, different pasta

We start out with Tagliatelle Carbonara and garlic bread, which is down on the list for tonight.  I don't know about you people, but I always get a bit nervous when it comes to the adding of the egg/cheese/cream bit, as pictures of scrambled egg float past threateningly.  However, some kind of magic always happens and I've never (yet) resulted in scrambled egg, fingers crossed.  I love this recipe, but we don't have it often as it is just too calorific - but versions without the cream just aren't the same.  So, we go for "little and not very often" with this one.

Wednesday's recipe is for Smoked Haddock Risotto.  I'll have to catch a photograph of this one, as it would appear we have always been too keen to eat it, to take photographs of it, in the past.  Risotto is one of Chillibob's specialities and he does a tremendous job with them, the Smoked Haddock version being one of our favourites.  Asda have a special offer on Smoked Haddock at the moment, which made this Risotto change from a Smoked Haddock and Black Pudding experimental risotto, to our old favourite.

Thursday, in honour of National Sausage Week, Chillibob is making us Sausages in Onion Jam glaze with Clapshot and peas.  We pondered on buying the onion jam/chutney, but as we'd just bought an enormous bag of onions for £1, it seemed particularly unadventurous.  Hence, Chillibob will have his first go at onion jam/chutney, which will be fun and I'm sure delicious.

I can't remember ever having Clapshot, although I suspect I probably have made it before - just not with the proper name attached to it.  Still, it'll be interesting and I'm sure I'll like it - Swede and Potato, what's not to like?

Photograph c/o BBC Good Food website

Friday and I'm back in the cooking saddle.  We're down on the list to have "Chilli Chicken curry with rice".  We love our curries and it's been a while since I made one.  This recipe doesn't deal with curry paste, but instead builds the curry flavour by degrees as you add the various spices.  I've done this one before and it was very successful, so fingers crossed!  Maybe I can ask Chillibob to make some of his Naan bread to go with it.

Saturday is an interesting one - Stuffed Peppers and Fennel & Tomato Gratin.  This one is completely new to us so once again we don't have a photograph and the stuffed pepper recipe is one I'm adapting from Foodista.  It was intended, originally, for stuffing Squash but I see no reason why it can't be used in a sweet pepper instead.  Watch this space for the final verdict!

As for the Fennel & Tomato Gratin, well that's an Ottolenghi recipe from "The Cookbook".  It sounds completely delicious and has a sweet crumble topping which is interesting.  Hopefully the creaminess of the Gratin will go wth the spiciness of the stuffed Peppers.

Next comes Sunday, where we've decided to have a standard Roast Chicken, with a very non-standard "Spicy Lentil" dish from Ottolenghi's "Plenty".  I am in two minds as to whether to serve some green vegetable or not, I guess it depends on how filling I think the lentils are going to be.

Monday means that Chillibob is back in the kitchen and he's going all out with a wonderfully adventurous meal of Pirozhki (meat filled dumplings) from Silvena Rowe's book "Feasts", except with a filling made from the leftover roast chicken.  To accompany them, we'll be having Baked Red Cabbage and Apple - which I adore - and Spicy Sweet Potato wedges.  I can't wait!

It's good to be able to afford to be a bit more adventurous again!