hungry poodle

All this needs is some chopped parsley and a grinding of black pepper.

Having just moved to the Kansas City area, Elizabeth and Brendan are now ensconced in our “back yard”, as Elizabeth likes to put it, which makes it sound like they’re living in a tent. Actually, they’re snuggled into what used to be my mom’s digs, a former pool house that we rather grandly refer to as “the cabana.”

Coming to a Kansas winter from balmy Tampa was a kick in the seat of the pants for them both, and soon after arriving, Elizabeth warmed us all with her version of chicken noodle soup. You know your child has grown up when you start asking her for recipes rather than the other way around. Alas, the tables have turned, and I am glad of it. Lizzie and Brendan both love to cook. Finally, someone other than me who enjoys the process of making real food!

This is a super easy soup to assemble, yet it has the rich, slow-cooked flavor of a long-simmered broth because of Lizzie’s unorthodox methods. Here’s the process:

Buy a rotisserie chicken (I said easy, didn’t I?). Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into large chunks. Discard the carcass but save the skin from the breast.

Chop a large onion, two cloves of garlic, two celery stalks and one carrot into 1/4″ dice and sauté in a bit of olive oil in a large Dutch oven. Cut two more carrots into 1/2″ bias-cut coins and set them aside. While the vegetables are sweating, add a pinch of salt, fresh ground pepper, some crushed red pepper flakes and about 1 teaspoon of Herbes de Provence. Just before adding the broth, add two 1/4″ thick slices of fresh ginger (you don’t have to peel it) and two bay leaves.

Add two 24-oz. cartons of reduced-sodium chicken broth, the skin from the chicken breasts, the bias-cut carrots and the rind of a piece of parmesano-reggiano , if you have it, and bring to a simmer. Add the cut-up chicken and allow to simmer for about five minutes, then turn off the stove and place the pot on the back burner to allow the flavors to develop.

When you’re almost ready to eat, cook noodles in a separate medium-sized pot and drain.

If the soup has been sitting for awhile, skim the surface for any fat, return it to a simmer and remove the chicken skin and the cheese rind.

Serve in shallow bowls, placing noodles at the bottom and topping with broth, chicken and vegetables to your liking.  Liz likes to cook the noodles in a separate pot so that they don’t soak up all the broth in the soup, which I find to be an excellent idea.

By the way, did you balk at the addition of the fresh ginger?  You won’t be able to discern it in the finished soup, but it lends a sweet/savory element that is amazing. Liz said she came up with the idea when she had a cold and craved a soothing remedy.

Necessity is once again the mother of delicious invention.

When a recipe comes from a reputable source, if it’s good it ends up on countless food blogs. That’s the case with this tomato soup recipe, which I recently found on America’s Test Kitchen’s web site. They’re an arm of Cooks Illustrated.

Their test cooks have devised a method for making a rich, creamy soup with no cream. I was skeptical, but as I said, the recipe has been floating around the blogosphere for awhile now so I decided that it must be worth a try, and indeed it was.

They use sliced white sandwich bread to thicken the soup. Now before you get all squeamish, consider this: bread has been used as a thickener in Italy for generations in their Italian Bread Soup, otherwise known as Ribollita.

If you’re a fan of Nordstrom’s Tomato Basil Soup but don’t like the fact that it’s laden with cream,  make this and you won’t have to feel guilty when you accompany it with grilled cheese sandwiches. By the way, the original recipe does not call for basil, which is one of the predominant flavors in the Nordie soup. If you like basil, top each bowl with some slivers before serving.

Creamless Tomato Soup

2 T. olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf
1 (28-oz.) can tomatoes with their juice
1 t. brown sugar
2 slices white sandwich bread, crusts removed and bread torn into small pieces
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 T. brandy (optional)
salt and pepper
fresh basil or chives

Heat oil in a Dutch oven, add onion, garlic, red pepper flakes and bay leaf and cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and their juice and break up tomatoes with a potato masher or fork into pieces no bigger than 2 inches. Add brown sugar and bread and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer until bread is beginning to break down, about 5 minutes.

Transfer soup to a blender and blend until smooth. (You can also use an immersion blender.) Return to pot and stir in chicken broth and optional brandy. Bring to a simmer, add salt and pepper to taste along with basil or chives. Drizzle each serving with extra virgin olive oil.

Serves 4

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