In the Kitchen with Typhoid Mary

I’m not sure what it was — the stress of having a new canine addition to our home; Susan’s picking up some wicked cold during her commute to the city every day, and passing it to me; deadline angst; or a combination of everything — but over the last week, I’ve been felled by a flu so hideous that I’ve spent most of every day flat on my back, trying to stave off the inevitable fever and queasiness and aches and general malaise. A lot of wasted time, if you ask me, so the parts of it where I was actually able to concentrate and focus were devoted to reading cookbooks and watching old Julia DVDs. What could possibly be better when you’re sick than watching Julia introduce Miss Caponette, or flip her sauteed potatoes onto her stovetop before dumping them back into the pan, or go supermarket shopping with Alice Waters (in the most obvious example of uncomfortable body language I’ve ever seen)? Not much.

Is it strange to be so food focused that while I’m at death’s door, all I can think about is dedicating myself to finally learning how to make terrines this year? Do other people do this? I don’t know. But the fact is that when I’m sick — which is not that often — all I can think about is cooking. Sometimes the actual eating part gets shelved for a little while, but never the cooking, and I’m certain it has to do with the memory of my grandmother standing in my kitchen and cooking for me when I was under the weather. Eighteen years of colds and flus and chicken pox and the resultant Wheatina, pastina, toast and tea, cold chicken, and chicken soup filter down into a sort of concentrated syrup of restorative goodness; I may not remember the actual eating, but I remember the cooking. And most strongly, my olfactory memory recalls the smell of chicken soup, which she used to prepare in the bottom portion of my mother’s all-glass, stovetop coffee percolator.

For years, I’d stumble out of bed and into the kitchen, and there it’d be: a small chicken nestled into the glass pot, its breast barely breaking the surface. There’d be a carrot and a stalk of celery and a wedge of onion. After it simmered slowly for over an hour, my grandmother would remove the chicken and its bones, set aside the vegetables, and then strain the soup—which was now a dark golden yellow—over and over until it was crystal clear. I’d go back for a nap, and by the time I was up again, the soup had been cooled and de-fatted, and was now back in the same pot, along with the vegetables, fresh dill, and usually some tiny, fideos-like noodles. If I was feeling well enough, she’d add some of the cooked chicken.

I’d wondered for the longest time why my grandmother always chose that particular pot; we had soup pots and a brown, Danish modern Dansk pot that someone had given my parents for an anniversary present one year. But she always insisted on scrubbing all manner of coffee aroma out of it, removing the percolator portion, and just using it as a sauce pot. And every once in a while, my father would drink his morning coffee and remark how chicken-like his Maxwell House was tasting.

Anyway, ten years ago, back when I was living in the city, Susan came down with a bug that only chicken soup would cure. I went out and bought the ingredients, and then shoe-horned them all into the only sizable pot I had—a 3-ish quart Creuset; the result was the densest, most flavorful chicken soup either of us had ever tasted, and a few hours later, Susan was on the mend. It occurred to me, in a DUH moment: smaller pot, denser flavor.

So this week, with Susan starting to feel better but still not quite right, and me feeling like I’d been flattened by a Mack truck, the only thing either of us wanted to eat was my grandmother’s chicken soup. The percolator has long-since disappeared, but the method still works wonders (as evidenced by my sitting upright for as long as it’s taken me to write this post).

Snug Chicken Soup

Sweet and robustly chickeny, this soup would, I’d like to think, make my grandmother proud. Combine the leftover broth with a higher proportion of noodles, vegetables, and chicken: the result is a hearty chicken noodle stew (of sorts).

Serves 2-3

1 three pound chicken

2 large shallots, peeled

1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into thick coins

2 celery stalks, sliced into thirds

4 sprigs of fresh dill

salt, to taste

egg noodles of your choice, cooked al dente, and drained

1. Place the chicken and the vegetables (but not the dill) in a 4 quart saucepan. Fill the pan with cold water so that the chicken is just submerged.

2. Set the pan over medium high heat, and bring to a boil. Skim the water as necessary (a pain, I know, especially since you have to contend with the vegetables, but an important step) for about five minutes, and reduce the heat to medium low. Continue to simmer for 90 minutes, uncovered.

3. Carefully remove the chicken and its bones (it will have fallen apart) to a platter, and the vegetables to a separate plate. Strain the soup through a fine mesh sieve, and into a large bowl. At this point, you can either chill the soup down in order to de-fat it, or you can wash out the saucepan, add the chicken soup back to the pot, bring to a slow simmer, add the vegetables, the dill, taste for salt, and continue to cook for about fifteen minutes. Add the cooked noodles, and heat through.

4. Serve hot, in shallow soup bowls.

Then get back into bed.

Tagged as: Chicken soup