Chicken Barley Soup

The key to a good soup is to make your own stock. This is especially true for a chicken soup intended to help ease a cold or flu. Stock from a carton or can just doesn’t have the same anti-inflammatory benefits of homemade. There’s just something about the chicken fat that gets extracted from the bones and skin that makes homemade chicken stock into something of a high end moisturizer for a sore throat.

I’m one of those people who saves vegetable trimmings and herb stems for stock. This really only works for certain vegetables, however. Potato skins, onion skins, carrot and parsnip peels are great for stock, but leafy greens will turn the pot bitter, and beets will turn it oddly sweet and blood red. Keep in mind the flavor you’re trying to achieve when collecting your trimmings.

If you’re not into saving vegetable trimmings, that’s perfectly fine. Prepare the vegetables for this soup in advance and save the trimmings to add to the chicken as it simmers. Since the trimmings will be discarded anyway, I like to separate them from the chicken pieces by using a vegetable steamer basket. This way the chicken simmers on the bottom of the pot while the trimmings steep on the top. When the stock is finished, the basket can simply be pulled out and the trimmings tossed. Another benefit of steeping the veggies on the top bunk is that they carry away some of the fat that rises to the top of the liquid as the chicken stews.

I like to chop my veggies into narrow strips the length of a spoon. I just like the uniformity of the way they look more than having little carrot wheels and celery half-moons like cafeteria soups.

Chicken Barley Soup - serves 8

4 carrots
2 parsnips
12 large sprigs parsley (about a half bunch)
4 stalks of celery, plus leaves
5 green onions
1 whole 3 – 3.5 lb. chicken
6 quarts of water
2 C trimmings from potatoes, parsnips, carrots and herbs (optional)
3/4 C barley

Start off by prepping the vegetables.

Place the celery and leaves, green onion trimmings, parsley stems and carrot and parsnip peels and optional added trimmings, if you have them on hand, into a steamer basket.

If the chicken came with the little baggy of innards and the neck, set the liver aside and add the gizzard, heart and neck to the veggie basket. (Bonus Recipe: It’ll be a long time before this soup is done and you’re most likely going to want a little nosh. While this thing simmers, take a tablespoon of butter, melt it in a small frying pan and saute the liver in the butter until it’s no longer pink in the center. Enjoy on toast with a little blue cheese and bask in the horrified stares of onlookers.)

Chop the veggies as desired. Cover and refrigerate.

Bring 6 quarts of salted water to a boil.

Meanwhile, cut the chicken into pieces. Drop the pieces  into the simmering water. Place the veggie basket into the water over the chicken. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 2.5 hours.

By this point the meat will be falling off of the bones. Remove the vegetable basket and discard contents. Carefully remove the chicken pieces with a tongs or a slotted spoon. Strain the stock if necessary to remove any runaway bones.

Allow the chicken pieces to cool enough to handle. The bones should slide right out of the meat. Go through each piece to remove any cartilage or other gristley bits.

Chop any larger pieces into 1 – 2 inch cubes. Cover and refrigerate.

You should now have a big pot of dense, fragrant stock. Add the barley to the stock and simmer 15 minutes. Add the prepared vegetables to the pot and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add the chicken to the pot and simmer for another 15 minutes.

Serve hot.

Kohlrabi Root Vegetable Soup

We are very fortunate to have a very generous neighbor with a very productive garden. This season, she has bestowed upon us kale, spinach, sorrel, lettuce and, most recently, kohlrabi. After this week’s rain, and today’s cloudy sky and cool temperatures, now seemed like a good time for a pureed soup. In addition to being warming, pureed soups are great for a light meal, especially after a few days of dining out.

In this case, I had class all weekend after returning from an absolutely torturous trip from New York. Our wipers quit in a storm while driving north on 84 through Connecticut, forcing us to stop by the side of the road and wait 45 minutes for roadside assistance. All told, the incident cost us three hours on a trip that was already pocked with traffic delays. On the bright side, the Belle and Sebastian concert – the purpose of our pilgrimage – was fantastic, not rained out as we feared it might be, and we had a great time with our friends in Brooklyn. Thank you guys if you are reading this!

Ten hour drives and wonderfully fun and nostalgic concerts that make me feel like I’m not that old aside, this is a lovely soup for a chilly, damp evening. Isn’t it nice how nature offers us exactly what we need at exactly the right time of year? Berries in spring, tomatoes in summer, and root vegetables and tubers in the fall when our internal clocks tell us to beef up for winter.

While vegetable stock would be a fine replacement to make this soup vegetarian, I find that chicken stock adds a nice layer of savory flavor to counter the kohlrabi’s deep mellow sweetness. Carrots add color and parsnips keep things honest.

Kohlrabi Root Vegetable Soup – serves 4

2 T butter
2 kohlrabi, peeled and diced
3 parsnips, peeled and diced
3 carrots, peeled and diced
4 C chicken stock
1/3 C heavy cream
salt to taste

Melt butter in a stock pot over medium heat. Add kohlrabi and saute for 2 minutes. Add parsnips and carrots and cook for 2 more minutes. Do not brown.

Add chicken stock. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 5 – 7 minutes until vegetables are fork-tender.

Remove from heat and, working in batches, puree the soup in a blender or food processor until smooth.

Return the soup to the stockpot. Bring to a light simmer and stir in cream.

Remove from heat and serve.

Nectarine Upside-Down Graham Cake

It’s always upsetting when fresh produce begins to go. We bought some lovely nectarines at last week’s farmer’s market and sadly, due to a week of entertaining and a subsequent plethora leftovers, the nectarines sat, virtually ignored for much of the week until at one point my husband resigned them to the refrigerator. They’re not bad, just a little tired. They needed to be revived. Reinvented.

The weather has turned chilly and damp here, and the wind is now whipping off of the water, so I decided to turn my sad nectarines into a warming upside-down cake. In the spirit of maintaining some level of healthfulness – they should have been a nutritious snack, after all – I made this cake with half whole wheat graham flour. The result is a hearty, dense cake that’s not too sweet. Fruit and fiber make this a less than sinful option for breakfast or brunch.

P.S.: by the way,  just FYI – this is YankeeCook’s 100th post. Hooray! I thought of installing one of those falling confetti, ticker-tape type plugins for this page, but I decided that would just be tacky. Too horn-tooty. Anyway, I’ll be sitting on my front steps waiting for those flowers you’re sending.

Nectarine Upside-Down Graham Cake - yields 6 to 8 servings

2 T butter
2 T honey
4 nectarines, sliced
2 eggs
1/3 C canola oil
1/4 C sour cream
1/2 t vanilla extract
1 C granulated sugar
1 C white flour
1 C whole wheat graham flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the butter at the bottom of 9 inch cake pan and allow it to melt in the oven while it pre-heats. Remove from oven. Drizzle the butter over the melted butter so that it is evenly distributed. Arrange the nectarine slices at the bottom of the pan.

In a medium size bowl, combine eggs, canola oil and sour cream. Gradually mix in sugar.

Sift flours, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Pour the batter over the nectarine slices in the cake pan.

Bake for 25 – 30 minutes until a wooden tooth pick comes out clean.

Allow to cool 10 minutes until the edges of the cake begin to pull away from the pan. Using a butter knife, loosen any edges that have not pulled away from the pan. Invert onto an oven proof dish.

Raise the oven heat to 500, and move a rack to the highest position. Place the inverted cake on the top rack so that the fruit caramelizes under the broiler for 5 minutes.

Remove from oven. Serve warm or cold with or without whipped cream.

Roasted Stuffed Figs

There is a chill in the air as Summer hangs up its floppy sunhat, puts on a scarf and goes by the name of Autumn again. While it’s sad to say goodbye to summer’s warm weather and produce, the best has just begun. Fall’s harvest brings all kinds of goodies, as you know. Aside from sweet squash and corn, more interesting and, dare I say, exotic fruits and vegetables are being grown and harvested in New England these days. Among them are figs.

More commonly seen in places like the Mediterranean, figs have made themselves comfortable right here in New England. Years ago, my mother saw figs at a local market and brought some to my grandfather, who had been raised in Italy. He hadn’t seen a fresh fig since he was a boy.

Well, I wish he could be here today to find them fresh and locally grown. The figs in this post came from a farm right down the road from us. Sweet and juicy, roasting condenses the sugars. I like them stuffed with a goat or blue cheese and drizzled with olive oil to add a little earthiness. Freshly chopped mint brings a subtle herbal snap to keep things from becoming too cloying.

Though this certainly seems like a decadent snack, figs are quite nutritious and low in fat. They contain vitamin A and C to prevent scurvy, as well as calcium and potassium.

Roasted Stuffed Figs – serves 4 -6

12 black mission figs
4 oz goat cheese
2 T finely chopped fresh mint
drizzle of olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Cut the stem off of the fig and cut a cross from the point to about halfway down. Gently open the fig and stuff with a teaspoon of goat cheese.

Arrange the figs on a lightly greased baking dish. Top with a sprinkle of mint and drizzle with olive oil.

Place the sheet on the top rack of the oven closest to the flame or element. Cook for 10-12 minutes until the cheese begins to brown slightly and the kitchen fills with the aroma of figs.

Cucumber Salad

We’re having what may be the final barbecue of the year for us this weekend. After a season of potato salads and coleslaw, I was thinking a lighter side dish might be in order. Cucumbers are still going strong in our area, and so I was reminded of this Eastern European dish. Cucumber Salad is cool and refreshing and makes a great accompaniment to barbecued meats.

This is my husband’s recipe. It’s satisfying but light, and offers an excellent alternative to typical mayonnaise-based sides; yogurt and sour cream provide far more calcium and protein than typical potato salad, and cucumbers offer far less carbohydrate.

Greek yogurt gives the dish more structure than plain American style yogurt, and the sour cream lends its sweet creaminess. We got our garlic from a vendor at the Rowley Farmer’s Market and the cucumbers came from a farm down the road.

Cucumber Salad – serves 4 – 6

1/2 C full fat sour cream
6 ounces plain Greek yogurt
1 clove garlic, crushed and diced
2 cucumbers
1 t dill
salt to taste

Peel the cucumbers, halve lengthwise and cut into 1/4 inch slices.

In a large bowl, toss the cucumbers with garlic, sour cream, yogurt and dill. Season with salt to taste.

Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with dill, if desired.