Kissing Is for the Kitchen

My friend Bekki has been an inspiration to me on a number of household fronts, including cooking. We like to trade tips and questions on Facebook. I told her about chipotle and she reminded me that toast is greater than world domination. A couple weeks ago I asked her to write something for you. You can believe everything she says here, except the part about my being a gourmet cook. I prefer the term “junior foodie-in-training.”

Please leave her lots of comments telling her how wonderfully humorous her writing is and how much you enjoyed the soup (you are planning to make it, aren’t you?); maybe the pressure will finally catapult her to start her own blog. (Please, Bekki? Please!)

 “Kiss the Cook” Chicken Soup

Hi, I'm Bekki, Rachel's friend from New Hampshire. Rachel has been teasing me to start a cooking blog for almost a year (not going to happen) and then sweetly requested a guest post for her blog last week. Mmmmhmmmm. Guest post for a gourmet cook/English professor. No pressure there.

Rachel's writing and cooking appear effortlessly graceful. I'm quite sure she's never had to fish the box out of the trash because she forgot how long the cake had to bake. After 27 hours of paper grading I envision her whipping up a pot of homemade sauce and hand-rolled tortellini while Kevin entertains her with his witty banter, not scrounging through her couch cushions to find enough change for the Dollar Menu at McD's.

And her writing? Wow, just wow. How does she make you feel like you're standing in her kitchen chatting with her while she cooks? Every time I try to write I end up channeling Martha Stewart or Mr. Rogers. Understandably, I'm nervous. But I love Rachel, and if she wants a guest post, I'll give it a whirl.

I also have a very different cooking style from Rachel. I don't own a T.V., so I missed that inspiring Iron Chef episode featuring gilded badger spleens on couscous. (Can I use so as a conjunction? See what I mean? This is stress with a capital “S”. Or is it capitol “S”? Maybe that question mark is supposed to be inside the quotation marks. I need coffee...)

I don't subscribe to any cooking magazines or have a besplattered copy of The French Laundry on my cookbook shelf. Eighteen years ago when I first married, I realized that even a hamburger was outside my skill set and started collecting recipes. Then I began noticing that technique made a lot more difference than whether or not I used Herbs de Provence or celery salt. Now I know whether I want to sear, saute, or braise the meat, and how to put together a colorful, tasty salad in the middle of February without breaking the budget. My passion is Bistro cuisine: I like to riff on simple classic menus using fresh local ingredients.

During the fall and winter I make soup once a week. Even my kids love soup. Of course, that could be because I always serve a dessert on soup night, but I prefer to think they actually enjoy the soup. My first soups weren't particularly memorable. Meat has a tendency to assume the flavor and texture of three-day-old bubblegum when it's been simmering for hours. Rice, noodles, and potatoes dissolve into a gelatinous mass, and vegetables become mushy. I was quite disappointed to discover this after all the stories I had read portraying the homey pot of soup bubbling away over the fire.

As it turns out, soups are much tastier when you prepare the ingredients to maximize their individual flavors and then combine everything just long enough to meld those flavors at the end of the process. I suppose it would spoil the fairy tales to stop and dismember whoever is ending up in the soup pot so you could roast the meaty bits and use the skin and bones to create a kickin' broth, though. (Maybe that should be “whomever”? And I still don't remember where that pesky question mark belongs. Time for a chocolate break...)

Without further ado, I present the speedy version of the Page family's favorite chicken soup. The idea for using a pre-roasted chicken and enriching a commercial broth is from Pamela Anderson (no, not that one!). If you, like me, prefer to start with a whole raw chicken, go to the library, check out a copy of The Perfect Recipe (also by Pamela Anderson), and flip to page 19. Unless you taste the two recipes side-by-side, however, you probably won't be able to tell the difference.

 “Kiss the Cook* Chicken Soup”

3 quarts water

3 Tbsp Chicken base. If you don't have or can't find base, replace 2 quarts of the water with a quality boxed chicken stock.

1 fully cooked rotisserie chicken. Beware of weird flavors like lemon pepper or Bubba's BBQ that will ruin the soup.

2-3 Tbsp. vegetable oil, just enough to coat the bottom of your soup pot.

1 large onion, finely diced so it will fly under the kid radar

2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4” x 1” sticks

1 large stalk celery, halved and sliced fairly thin

2-5 cloves garlic, depending on how important kisses are to you

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, or 2 Tbsp dry

Bay leaf

1 teaspoon dried ground marjoram. Marjoram is a sweeter, more delicate version of the flavors in oregano. A favorite in Europe, it blends well with other French spices like parsley and thyme.

2 tsp lemon juice from a contented lemon grown on a south-facing slope in Spain or a bottle of ReaLemon, whichever you happen to have on hand.

¼ tsp white pepper

Dash of cayenne pepper

3-4 cups cold cooked brown rice or barley. If a starch is refrigerated after being cooked it chemically changes so that it will not absorb much more liquid. The soup will taste better if the rice/barley was originally prepared in chicken broth.

2 cups fresh baby spinach or chard leaves torn into bite-sized pieces, optional

Bring water and base to a simmer over medium-high heat in a large soup kettle. While the water comes to a boil, pick the meat off the chicken and put it aside. Pop the bones and skin into the simmering water. Reduce heat to low, partially cover, and simmer 20 to 30 minutes until flavorful.

Strain, reserving broth, and discard the skin and bones. Return the empty kettle to a burner set on medium-high.

Add oil, heating it until shimmering, then onions, carrots and celery. Saute until soft, stirring occasionally, about 6-8 minutes. Add garlic and parsley and cook just until they release their aroma. Do not allow to brown. Add chicken and broth and bring to a simmer.

Add bay leaf, marjoram, lemon juice, white pepper, red pepper, rice, and spinach/chard. Return soup to a simmer until spinach/chard is fully cooked, about 3 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and seasonings if necessary. Serve immediately with a great crusty French bread. The person you love the most always gets the poisonous bay leaf or a stray bone to choke on. (Oh dear. I just ended a sentence with a preposition. I think I'd better call it quits!)

*We have a tradition in our home that if dinner is so fantastically delicious that it all gets devoured, the cook gets a kiss. Unless, of course, you simply didn't make enough. Then you get kicked instead.