Hello friends,
Well, that's it. I went to Greece for a (beautiful) wedding, and I've come back to a new season. That's fine for me though, all it took was the merest snifter of autumn and I dove straight into the bottom drawer for the Big Pan.
After starting my period on aeroplane, driving home from said plane journey at 3am yet still somehow hitting traffic, and then waking up with a stomach bug, I left the weekend behind feeling quite blue. There was no Greek sunshine streaming through the window, only the hideous glare of a laptop screen. Sometimes you wake up with a headache and know you will go to bed with the very same headache. What a miserable day, you might think. But no! This day was an opportunity; the perfect day for a giant bowl of chicken soup. A soupporunity.
I'd been thinking about chicken soup before I went to Greece because of a giant bowl of chicken tikka. Like all good people, I use chicken thighs for tikka and, like all cheapskates, I buy bone-in, skin-on thighs. This results in a pile of chicken bones and skin that, rather than being mercilessly cast aside, are put to good use. The skins go straight in the air fryer (this is the only purpose I've found for an air fryer) and crisp up to be repurposed as dogs treats. The fat that pools in the bottom of the air fryer then goes in a jar and into the freezer for later. The bones go in the freezer too, ready for stock making. On one of the - what we now know to be - last days of summer, we had a big family dinner outside with chicken tikka, biryani, kachumber, breads, mint yogurt and sangria (slightly off theme but still delicious). I’d had salads a plenty in Greece and was full to the brim with feta1, so now I was ready for something hot and hearty.
The memory of the jar of fat and other chicken-y accessories in the freezer swam around my brain. They were biding their time, waiting for the first cool day. And here it was! I was ready, the weather was ready, the fat was ready. I scurried downstairs and creaked open my recipe book to the chicken soup section. The pages are filthy and splashed - the best endorsement for a good recipe. What is already an excellent chicken broth was boosted with half a kilo of roasted bones, and it gave the soup an extra depth and gloss. The fat made extra rich and delicious dumplings (based on matzah balls but with other breadcrumbs that needed using) that bobbed happily on the surface of the broth as they cooked. I had the perfect amount of noodles for four, and four hungry people. I had a spare dumpling which, as the law clearly states, belonged to the cook. It all worked out wonderfully. Let the slurping commence.
There’s no need to mourn the end of the summer. Remember the warming broths, and spiced fruit puddings, and roasted squash, and hot sausage baps with the good brown sauce2 after a cold walk? We’re entering the time of big bowls of hot noodles. There’s lots to look forward to, and who knows, there may still be a few sunny days left in the old girl yet. But, if not, I’ll be ready, clutching a jar of fat and soup spoon.
Yours in broth,
Deb
Oh woe is me.
Shoutout to Tracklement’s - I am available for brown sauce-based brand deals.