Chicken Soup For The Cough

I have been pretty lucky the past few years and have avoided this nagging cough. I used to get it like clockwork twice a year. It seemed like I was always coughing. Well, it is back this year. It sounds worse than it really is. The perfect dinner for this ailment is Chicken Soup. Homemade broth, sauteed onions and carrots, spinach and noodles. I squeezed a little lemon juice in the pot at the end.

It tasted crisp, clean, light, and nourishing. I had 2 bowls for dinner and plan on more for lunch tomorrow.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

This dinner started on Saturday when I picked up 2 fowl at the grocery store.
Saturday I made 2 large pots of broth, my sister's recipe.

 On Sunday I removed the meat from the carcasses and removed the fat from the broth.

 Wait, did I mention that one cat was very interested in the whole process.

I have 28 cups of broth in the freezers! 

 

And for dinner, I sauteed some diced onion and carrots. Added chicken broth to the pan along with some of the chicken meat, frozen vegetables, chopped spinach and seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme. I had some homemade noodles in the freezer and they were perfect in the soup.

Brioche, French Bread, Soup, Sauce and Dinner

Where to start? As I have stated previously I plan on making a lot of bread this year. The year starting with the cooler weather setting in. I have a cookbook which I have had forever, A Basket of Homemade Breads. I decided on the Brioche. The recipe makes 16 rolls. Seeing as it is just the two of us I cut the recipe in half. The dough has a fantastic texture. See the bottom of this post for the recipe.

Today I made the first large pot of my Mom's Meat Sauce. I needed some bread to go with the sauce. I remembered a recipe I found last year, No Knead French Bread. The big advantage of this recipe is that it does not take 18 hours for the dough to rise. I LOVE this recipe! Click Here to view  the recipe and visit the blog Noshtalgia.

Next we have the Chicken Soup. I used my sister Lenore's recipe. It simmered for over 3 hours and the cats were beside themselves when I was removing the meat from the carcass! Click Here for the recipe.

Seeing I had the soup simmering on the stove it seemed like the perfect time to make our first pot of meat sauce. I sauteed chopped onions and browned the sausages and ground meat. I added the crushed tomatoes and let that simmer. My sister recently reminded me that our Mom use to add chicken legs to her sauce. I opted for adding boneless chicken thighs. I let that simmer for about 3 hours, seasoning it with salt, pepper, oregano, basil and parsley. After it cooled it went into the fridge so tomorrow I will remove any fat from the top of the pot.

And now what did we have for dinner?

I decided on making my Mom's Chicken Cutlets when I was mixing the Brioche dough this morning. I ended up with 2 egg whites and a yolk (I only used an egg white for the glaze on the Brioche). Mom's recipe for Chicken Cutlets requires the egg whites to be beaten separately before adding the yolks so it seemed like a perfect way use up the eggs. The meat was so moist and the breading was the perfect color. Click Here for the recipe.

We have a new olive oil store in town, The Shoreline Vine. What an amazing place. You can taste every oil and vinegar... which made for an interesting lunch. I picked up these 2 small bottles and it seemed perfect for our side dish.

 

I think I may have picked the last of the green beans today. And we had a couple of small tomatoes. Those along with some tomatoes I from my brother-in-law, Ralph, were mixed together for one last tomato and green bean salad. Actually I think this may have been our only tomato and green bean salad of the summer! I steamed the beans and seasoned them along with the tomatoes with the vinegar and olive oil pictured above and salt, pepper, oregano, basil and parsley. Excellent.

And of course there was also my favorite - Roasted Potatoes!

Brioche, from A Basket of Homemade Breads. This recipe as shown here will result in 16 rolls.

Ingredients -
4 cups (1 lb) all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cake (1/2 oz) fresh yeast
2-3 tbsp warm water
4 eggs
4 egg yolks
1- 1 1/2 sticks ( 1/2 - 2/3 cup) melted butter, cooled
2 tbsp sugar
beaten egg for glaze

Method -
1.  Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Make two wells in it.
2.  Cream the yeast with the water and pour it into one well. Into the other well pour the beaten eggs, yolks, melted butter and sugar.
3.  Beat together with your hands to form a fairly soft dough.
4.  Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for 1 hour.
5.  Brush 16 cupcake cups with melted butter.
6.  Punch down the dough by kneading and cut into two. One piece being 2/3 of the dough. (See photo from cookbook below for clearer description!)
7.  Shape into 16 large and 16 small balls. Place a large ball in the bottom of each cupcake cup. Punch a hole in the center of the large ball and place the small ball in it. (See photo from cookbook below for clearer description!)
8.  Prove, covered with a dry cloth, until doubled in size.
9.  Brush gently with beaten egg, you don't want to knock off the small ball of dough. Bake in a very hot oven (450ºF) for 10 minutes.

My copy of this book has been used a lot as this photo will show!

Chicken Noodle Soup

Someone was sneezing and coughing this morning so I decided to make Chicken Noodle Soup. I was going to use canned chicken broth. I had to go to the store to pick up the noodles and I always check the meat department for fowl. And today they had fowl! I was so excited I bought two.
I rushed home to start the broth, using my sister's recipe.
The result was a really tasty soup, much better than if I used canned broth.

What did we have for dinner a year ago?
Friends and Company

What did we have for dinner 2 years ago?
Chicken Cutlet Paninis

What did we have for dinner 3 years ago? 

No Post : (

What did we have for dinner- Part 2

Yeah again a crazy week. I love long weekends but fitting 5 days of work into 4 can be... not sure how to describe it. But the week is over and I can recap our dinners.
And as an added bonus I have an entry for Cookbook Sundays in this recap. (Hint - it's Thursday's entry)

Tuesday - Chicken Noodle Soup

On Sunday I made a large pot of my sister's Chicken Broth recipe so obviously we had to have soup. The broth came out very good. (Food styling by Chris)


Wednesday - Vegetable Frittatta

Being Ash Wednesday I made a frittatta using the leftover vegetables and potatoes from our Whole Foods purchase this weekend. Perfect way to use any kind of leftovers.


Thursday - A Cookbook Sundays Entry! - Baked Macaroni with Eggplant

This was suppose to be our Ash Wednesday meal but last night I picked up my new car (!!!) so we needed something quick to heat up and the frittatta fit the bill.
But tonight we had Baked Macaroni with Eggplant. The recipe is from La Cucina. I have not cooked from there recently but the Cookbook Sundays blog had me going through my bookcase. Chris gave me this book for Christmas back in 2010 and I love it.
It was written by Giuliano Bugialli, The Italian Academy Of Cuisine - Rizzoli (2009).

Here is a description of the book from Google-
Fifty years ago, a group of Italian scholars gathered to discuss a problem: how to preserve traditional Italian cooking. They formed the Italian Academy of Cuisine to document classic recipes from every region. The academy’s more than seven thousand associates spread out to villages everywhere, interviewing grandmothers and farmers at their stoves, transcribing their recipes—many of which had never been documented before. This is the culmination of that research, an astounding feat—2,000 recipes that represent the patrimony of Italian country cooking. Each recipe is labeled with its region of origin, and it’s not just the ingredients but also the techniques that change with the geography. Sprinkled throughout are historical recipes that provide fascinating views into the folk culture of the past. There are no fancy flourishes here, and no shortcuts; this is true salt-of-the-earth cooking. The book is an excellent everyday source for easily achievable recipes, with such simple dishes as White Bean and Escarole Soup, Polenta with Tomato Sauce, and Chicken with Lemon and Capers. For ease of use there are four different indexes. La Cucina is an essential reference for every cook’s library.

The only change I made in this recipe was omitting the lardo. Still have not found that item in a store near me. Here is the recipe -


Ingredients
3 eggplants, cut in thin lengthwise strips
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lardo, minced (I have never seen this in a store...)
1 garlic clove, crushed
3/4 lb. fresh plum tomatoes, chopped and seeded (I used canned San Marzano tomatoes)
3/4 lb. macaroni rigatoni
2oz. caciocavallo, sliced (I used Scamorza)
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
Salt




Method
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Grease a baking dish. Put the eggplant slices in a colander, sprinkle with salt, and leave for 30 minutes to make them lose their bitter juice.
Heat 1/4 inch of olive oil in a pan. Rinse and dry the eggplant slices and fry them; set aside.
In a saucepan heat the lardo and 2 tablespoons olive oil and saute the onion and garlic; add the tomatoes and season with salt; cover and cook at low heat.
Cook the macaroni in salted boiling water; drain when al dente.
In the baking dish arrange alternating layers of macaroni, tomato sauce, eggplant, and caciocavallo, continuing the layers until no ingredients are left. Place pats of butter across the surface and bake for 10 minutes.
Remove from pan and place onto a serving dish and cut in wedges to serve.

And finally Friday - The Simplest and Best Shrimp Dish

Wow what a crazy 4 days this has been. But I planned ahead for tonight. I took some shrimp out of the freezer this morning. At lunch I picked up some green beans and 2 potatoes that could be cooked in the microwave. Sorry but I had to do it to save time. But the shrimp is so easy and fast to prepare. The recipe is from the Mark Bittman. I have made this recipe so many times. Perfect for when you are running late or stuck in traffic.