Matzoh Balls in Chicken Soup
Happy Passover! As Jews all over the world contemplate the struggles of those without the freedoms we take for granted, solace is found, perhaps universally, in a familiar form; chicken soup. Maybe the seasonings and vegetables change with the locale, but warm, inviting broth with a generous dose of chicken, stays constant.
Seems like an easy enough soup to make. Heck, in a pinch, pop a top and you've got chicken soup. Just ignore that voice in the back of your head saying "man there's a lot of salt in this" and "I just don't get the sense of Mom in this soup".
For this particular soup, I needed a head start. I have found in the past, that if one of several aspects of this soup are bland, the whole thing falls apart. So this time, I decided to break out each component and deal with it separately. First, the chicken.
Day 1. Make roast chicken with lemon, rosemary, garlic salt. (1 C Kosher salt with grated lemon rind, chopped fresh rosemary, minced garlic). Clean and pat dry the chicken. Put 2 TBSp of the salt mixture in the cavity plus the juice of one lemon and the squeezed lemon rinds. Rub the whole bird with olive oil, and cook for 60 - 75 min @ 450 deg. As soon as it is cooked, and the juices run clear at the thigh, remove from the oven, and sprinkle with another Tbsn or two of the salt mixture. Let sit covered for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, deglaze the roasting pan and use as gravy. Enjoy - this dish makes my mouth water just thinking about it. SAVE THE CARCASS!!!! Put the carcass and any accumulated juices in a saucepan, cover with water and simmer for a couple of hours. Strain and save. Make sure you save at least two cups of this chicken meat for the soup - you do not want to rely on the cooked chicken meat from the broth making for flavor.
Day 2. Make brown chicken broth. Roast the chicken parts, carrots, celery, leeks, onions at 450 for an hour. Then move to a soup pot, cover with water, and add your bouquet garni of choice. Since I already had some broth flavored with lemon, rosemary and garlic, my bouquet garni consisted of fresh rosemary sprigs, flat leaf parsley and bay leaves. Since my amazing Boss went to Egypt and brought me back a huge container of really high quality saffron, I added a bit of crushed saffron in too. All this simmered for about 3 hours and was strained and saved. The chicken and cooked vegetables were not saved - I know, I am a bad, wasteful person. I also tasted that cooked chicken and decided it had given all of its flavor to the broth and was simply a shell of its former self.
Day 3. Make the Matzoh Balls. I have been using a version of this recipe from the "New York Cookbook" for about 10 years:
The secret ingredient is Vodka! Selzer makes them light, vodka adds to the flavor. Don't skimp on the salt here, make sure all the ingredients are well mixed. And the less you touch the matzoh balls the better - wet hands, roll them off the spoon quickly and into the boiling water.
Next, cut up your soup veggies. I used carrots, celery and leeks. Saute them in butter until the colors are bright and they are slightly tender. Add in the chicken meat from day 1, and just cook a little longer until it is heated.
Combine the chicken broth from Day 1 with the brown broth from Day 2, for a rich, flavorful, mahogany colored broth. At this point, all players are still separate, and will remain so. Once the matzoh balls are done, plop two into a soup bowl, add the cooked vegetables and chicken, and then ladle on the broth. I saved whatever matzoh balls were left over with a little broth, and the remaining broth went in the freezer for the next soup creation.
Happy Holidays!
