August 17, 2018
Dear Everyone:
I really do like having a TV in my kitchen.
Last week I ate the last bag of Chicken
Bisque Soup
from the freezer. This week,
I decided to make some more.
While doing my weekly grocery shopping, I picked up all the necessary
ingredients.
This is an old family recipe.
Which is to say, we’ve had it in the family for years, ever since
our Dad had some at a restaurant in
Portland,
Oregon. He liked it so
well that The Pantry, at 1025
N.E. Broadway Street, happily supplied him with the recipe.
The restaurant, alas, has either moved, or is no more.
At least, according to
Google Maps.
However, I still have a copy of the original recipe, complete with the
restaurant’s logo. Of
course, we’ve made a few revisions over the years.
This is a thick, creamy soup, all the more so when it’s reheated.
Mother usually served it over rice as a form of
Chicken a la King. She
also never bothered with the part about
blanching
the green bell peppers.
Whether that was because blanching seemed like an unnecessary step, or
because none of us really knew what “blanching” was, doesn’t quite
matter after all these years.
Over time, I’ve made some revisions of my own.
For instance, the part about
boiling a three pound stewing hen for half a day or more.
I have better things to do with my time, thank you very much.
Also, I prefer white meat, so more than half the stewed chicken
would be looking for a new home.
That’s just wasteful.
Consequently, I would take a “shortcut” and boil just the carrots,
celery and onions, without the chicken, for a few hours to produce a
nice, rich vegetable broth.
In the meantime, I would use a second pot to poach some chicken breasts.
I can now do all this while watching the latest news on the kitchen TV.
It works because of a little box, from the
cable company, that picks up the signal through the household
network. I can even choose
to watch something I had recorded earlier, like one of last night’s talk
shows.
At this point, I would have eight cups of broth and some cooked chicken.
If necessary, I could put both in the refrigerator until the next
day, or continue, depending on how much time is left.
Then I would proceed to the next step.
Cut up all the cooked chicken, all the while muttering to the TV, “That
idiot is going to start a war!”
Finely chop the
green bell
pepper, while laughing at last night’s talk-show host’s jokes about
the idiot, who’s going to start a war.
Thoroughly drain a jar of chopped
pimentos.
Pour the vegetable broth into my largest pot, a genuine, copper-bottom,
2-gallon Revere Ware cauldron that’s as good today as the day I bought
it, several decades ago.
Quality lasts.
This is where Part One of my “secret” comes in.
For eight cups of broth, I add four tablespoons of chicken
bouillon.
That makes up for omitting the stewing hen.
The original recipe then calls for a “butter roux”, made by melting two
cubes (one half-pound) of butter (or margarine), then mixing in a cup of
flour. Bring the
now-very-chicken-y broth to a low boil and slowly add the butter roux.
This is what makes the soup thick and creamy.
Now, you may be thinking, “Woah!
That’s a lot of butter!”
And it is. For eight
cups of broth, it works out to two tablespoons of butter per cup.
But this is where Part Two of my “secret” comes in.
The original recipe calls for one-half cup of chopped chicken.
Our Dad used to quip, “The chicken went through this soup in hip
boots.” I add two to three
pounds of chopped chicken,
all white meat, of course.
Consequently, each serving has more chicken than soup in it.
Add the chopped peppers and pimentos and simmer for a quarter-hour, or
so, to let all the flavors blend together.
Cool, then ladle into freezer bags.
Presto! Enough soup
to last a month or two. For
Chicken a la King, prepare a pot of steamed rice.
Put any leftover rice in freezer bags of their own.
Shovel all the pots, utensils, etc., into the dishwasher.
Then relax, while sneering at that idiot, who’s going to start a
war. Any day now.
Love, as always,
Pete
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