GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU
Way back when I was just a little bitty boy, my grandmother would make chicken soup. “Big deal”, you say, “everyone’s grandmother made chicken soup”. Well, this is really good soup, for one, and for two, it somehow involves tomatoes. Not good if you have a nightshade allergy, sure, but delicious otherwise.
It’s been cold and allergy season around these parts, so I thought I’d make a traditional so-called ‘cure for what ails you’. After my grandfather died and before my grandmother joined him, I made sure to ask her for a few of her recipes. Like many grandmothers, she never really measured anything, so I had to learn the recipes by what she could tell me, and fill in the rest with memory and taste.
Unfortunately for me, the last time I moved, I seem to have misplaced some of the papers I wrote down. I found the recipes for stew and lentil soup (both later posts), but not the chicken soup! I texted my mom and aunt and got some guidelines from them, and went on from there with taste and memory.
I started with some stock made from bone-in chicken breasts and drumsticks. When I took the stock out of the pressure cooker, I also reserved the chicken meat, which was conveniently falling into shreds. I poured the glorious golden liquid into another bowl and prepared to make it into soup.
The first thing I did was to chop up a mirepoix and fry it in olive oil for a few minutes with some salt to let it sweat. Oh, what the heck, have another picture:
To this base I added the chicken stock and a small can of diced tomatoes. Yes, tomatoes. Part of my panic in being unable to find this recipe is that apparently nowhere else on the Internet does there exist a recipe for chicken soup with tomatoes quite like this one. Anyway, I cooked the vegetables in the soup for about 1/2 hour to get them all nice and soft, and then it was stick blender time!
With the vegetable part of the soup done, I added the chicken shreds. These were already cooked, but they absorb flavor from the soup and so I cooked that all for another maybe 10 minutes while prepping the pasta. Yes, pasta.
Pastina is one of the thirstiest damn pastas on the face of this earth and 1/2 cup will drink the entire pot of soup if you let it. I cooked it in a separate pot, 1/2 cup of pastina to two cups water. When the water had mostly been absorbed by the pasta (about 4 minutes), I drained the leftover water in a fine mesh strainer, unceremoniously dumped it into a bowl, ladled in the soup, and covered it liberally with grated cheese. Yes (again), cheese. It really doesn’t work as well without it.
It wasn’t quite the same as my memories of it (what is, really?), but it was close enough that it brought me to tears. It’s a fairly simple recipe, and I hope it brings you as much joy and comfort as it did for me.
RECIPE
- 6 cups chicken stock (as in the turkey stock recipe, but use bone-in breasts and drumsticks to replace the turkey wings)
- As much of the meat from the stock as you can salvage, torn into shreds
- 2-3 carrots, diced
- 3-4 ribs celery, diced
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes, nothing added
- 1/2 c. pastina
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- Grated cheese, like a Locatelli or Romano
Saute the carrots, celery, and onion in the olive oil with some salt until the onions are translucent and the carrots are much brighter in color, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook for 30 seconds or so, then add the stock. Cook this all together for 30 minutes or so until the vegetables are soft. Take a stick blender to the soup (see Notes) and puree until there are only little tiny bits of vegetable left. Add the chicken shreds and cook for another 10 minutes.
In a separate, smaller pot, bring 2 cups of salted water to a boil. Add the pastina and cook for 4 minutes. Most of the water will have been absorbed; drain the rest in a fine-mesh strainer and add the pasta to a bowl. Add a cup or so of soup to the bowl, and cover with grated cheese.
NOTES
I don’t really remember my grandmother using stock or bones, but I also don’t remember watching. I know she cooked the mirepoix and the chicken together and made the soup base from that, but I still like starting with stock because I think it adds more flavor, plus whatever gelatin and minerals you get from the bones.
Grandma also didn’t have a stick blender, so I think she used a potato masher to get at the vegetables. If you only have a regular blender, be careful to blend in small batches and keep the lid on and a towel over the lid (see also the notes on this page).
Store the soup and pasta separately. The pastina will drink every ounce of the soup if you let it. I will cook up a portion of pasta every time I serve the soup; I haven’t quite figured out how to pack it for lunch, though.
I have a vague memory of little discs of carrot in the soup — maybe she pulled some out before mashing the rest? — but absolutely no memory of ever seeing celery pieces or even a hint of onion. I definitely remember the little orange flecks in the soup, though. Maybe I was remembering the stew?
Pastina is definitely the right way to go with this soup. My mother disagrees and argues for acini di pepe, but I am sad to say she is wrong. It’s an entirely different texture and mouthfeel. You could also use orzo if you wanted to be wrong, but I don’t remember her ever doing that. Orzo works better in avgolemono, but that’s another post.