This week I felt that I should write something deep and meaningful about terrorism, but where to start. I don't want to live in a world where human life is used to make a political or a religious point, where a tiny minorities actions can cause distrust and intolerance amongst cultures who previously had lived together harmoniously and where a small group of people can seemingly start a war. So although I am not ignoring the events in Paris I don't feel that I can write about it, I just don't have the words.
So let me tell you instead about my attempt to make chicken noodle soup.
I've had a cold and a cough this week and spent some time looking online for home cures. I didn't fancy a salt water gargle or chewing on a raw garlic clove and I really couldn't imagine how a mustard footbath was going to help, but a reoccurring remedy I kept reading about was chicken soup so I decided to give it a go. It took me the best part of the day on Monday to make and filled my house with savoury aromas.
First I brought a couple of pounds of chicken, a carrot, an onion, a leek and some water up to the boil. I then simmered it for two hour, skimmining the scum off the top every fifteen minutes or so. Next I took the chicken out, took the meat off the bones, put the bones back in the stock together with a paring of lemon, a slice of ginger and a handful of parsley stalks. This was boiled for an hour, strained and left to go cold.
When chilled I removed the fat from the stock and then reheated it. I seasoned it, added finely chopped carrot and leek and cooked it for a couple of minutes. Next I added the noodles and brought back to the boil, then finally added the chicken meat back in to reheat and some chopped parsley.
A lot of love, effort, time, care and attention went into making that soup. I don't really like touching raw meat but had laboriously skinned the chicken portions, ignoring how squeamish it made me feel. I had cut the veg into perfect tiny dice, I'd even pealed the carrot for goodness sake. Despite my cold and blocked nose even I could smell the wonderfully comforting aromour and Billy dog was salivating so much I was practically paddling in puddles of his drool. So after spending seven hours labouring over a hot stove, making my kitchen into a chicken scented steam room and driving Billy dog into a feeding frenzy, what did I eventually end up with and did it cure my cold?
The results of my cooking was a steaming bowlful of golden broth, floating with jewels of veg, parsley and noodles. It looked perfect, better than the recipe picture in fact, and it tasted like a steaming bowlful of hot water. Yes you read correctly, hot water with no flavour at all. I think that all the chicken taste had evaporated into steam and was now clinging to my soft furnishings, I would probably have got more flavour out of my rug and curtains than from the actual soup. Talk about an anticlimax, I had put in all that effort to effectively boil a kettle. I adjusted the seasoning and now had a steaming bowlful of salty water. And my cold? Would someone mind going to the chemists and picking me up some Lemsips please? Aitchoo!
I really wanted to end up with a steaming bowl of deliciousness instead of my watery imposter. A bowl created from a disparate group of ingredients, all coming together in a yummy combination, each ingredient complimenting the other. So this week I have learnt that things it don't always work out the way that you want; my soup was tasteless and France and the world are in mourning. Was it the recipes fault, the ingredients fault or had I done something wrong? Please let's not look for blame, judge by appearance or give up on soup, I'm convinced there's a bowl of perfection out there somewhere, we've just got to keep practising making it. Also we need to remember that there is more good soup out there than bad. Now does anyone know how to remove the smell of chicken from curtains?
1 comment:
Thanks Ray.
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