The Chicken Soup

There's nothing quite so elegant and satisfying to eat, on a damp autumn night, than broth. It takes a bit of time, a bit of patience, but the resulting golden liquid, entertaining on its own or with some lovely bits of boiled root vegetables and chicken, is worth more than any sad delivery or restaurant meal.

Most people will agree that there's a difference between restaurant and home-cooked meals. Usually, we think the difference is in appearance, decoration, technique, availability of ingredients, time. But, the difference is really in taste. After all, nothing tastes quite like something what you make for yourself to eat because, when you cook, you're adjusting everything to your taste.

That given, I've decided to start on a basic note: chicken soup.

My mother is an adamant believer in broth. After all, she is Cantonese, and Cantonese cuisine features some of the most elegant, intricate and intriguing broths around, often made from items one might imagine in a witch's larder: dried squids, foxseeds, lotus roots, dried prunes. Usually these ingredients are boiled in nothing more than water and a few pork bones thrown in for good measure. In fact, there are three crucial things to making a good broth: time, balance in ingredients; and never letting it reach a boil.

For a basic chicken soup, one has only to do the simplest things: chop chop chop, toss in the stock pot, cover with water, bring to a simmer, and go do something else. Here are my standard ingredients, and I have a rather large stock pot (12qt?), a rather cumbersome beast in miniature Paris apartment kitchens (as you'll soon see).

Ingredients:
4-5 medium carrots
2 medium onions
3 celery stalks
5 smallish turnips
1 big chicken (free-range; get a good one and ask your butcher to help you)*
3 bay leaves
3 branches of thyme
a very small handful of peppercorns
3 stalks of parsley
2 cloves



optional (and pictured)
1/3 celery root - because I had it lying about and wanted it finished
1 pork bone - I add pork bones to every little stock I make. I find a little pork bone adds body without dominating taste. Of course, if you're Jewish or Muslim, no pork for you.

Then, put in on to boil. Just as it hits that boiling point, reduce to simmer temperature and skim the scum off. Scum! Ugh, how I hate it. But, the real thing to watch out for is the heat. NEVER LET IT BOIL. Always simmer. A boiled stock is a ruined stock. I remember a scene in that lovely foodie film, Tampopo, where the aspiring ramen chef has a nightmare that she is being attacked, only to wake up and find that she left her stock to boil. Oh the drama! Similar in technique to braising, never let stewed or boiled meat actually boil. You'll lose all the taste and you might as well go get yourself a sandwich and fries to cry in.

Then, after ignoring the soup, playing with your toes, checking your email three times and maybe having some phone conversations, snacking on chocolate and having a nap, you'll check on your soup. This should be roughly 3 hours after. The whole apartment will be perfumed with that homey smell of chicken soup. Enough romantics! Pull the carcass out.



The thing is ugly, beastly, pale and ready to fall to pieces. Slide the meat off the bone and roughly chop up. Toss back in and finish the seasoning. Oops, and don't forget to pull out the aromatics as well (celery, parsley, bay leaves and thyme branches).



Today's version also included some unorthodox ingredients like Chinese Napa cabbage and green and red peppers. You can also throw in some dumplings, the western kind (made from flour, butter and milk). I'm not adverse to dumplings, even though I know they usually make people think of grubby-fingered peasants in some dingy-coloured countryside. Dumplings, if made right, are just the good bits floating in your soup that silkily slide down the gullet. They can fill out an ordinary broth into a complete meal.

Ideally, it's the broth you want. Sometimes, I like to pull out all the ingredients and just serve the broth, with the chicken on the side. A bit like a fowl version of pot au feu. But, excellent clear broth, with nothing added, can go under that more patrician name, consommé. With everyone rushing around adding truffles and fois gras to everything, and of course truffles and fois gras are quite fun, people have forgotten that true elegance is in a perfected consommé. It's the difference between all the hipster botoxed people running around and an unmade-up woman with gazelle-like grace and well-cut clothes simply sauntering by.

Of course, we needn't pretend to be that gazelle-like woman either. We could just rent a DVD, put on our slippers and eat chicken soup.
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*Chicken is so suspect these days it's better to just save the extra money and buy a real farm-fresh bird. All those other days, keep yourself occupied with something else. Trust me. It'll make you like chicken all over again.