I need the real thing.
I have an interesting Pauline thorn in the flesh that, when awake, essentially renders 99% of all food poisonous. Long story. Highly effective (but completely not recommended) way to lose weight. If you’ve ever seen an old fence post standing by itself in the middle of the desert, scoured into a slender splinter by the wind and the blowing sand, but still stubbornly standing, that’s me.
Anyway, one of the few foods that seems to still work is a proper chicken soup made with not much else besides chicken, carrots, fennel, and water or stock. My wife typically makes a big pot and then I subsist on that for days.
I am perpetually on the hunt for ways to improve the soup. I think I’ve found one! I recently stumbled on a website called NoRecipes. It’s a cooking blog written by a guy named Mark Matsumoto. He seems to reinvent and deconstruct dishes. There are some great looking recipes on that site, in addition to solid writing and excellent photographs. If you’re a foodie in any way, you’ll probably enjoy a few minutes perusing his posts.
He has a very interesting recipe for chicken soup that revolves around poaching the chicken. I’ve never done that before and I have big plans to try it out this evening. Who knew that my life would reduce down to the excitement of testing out a new chicken soup recipe?
Hmm. Sorry to hear about your state of toothpickness, that’s sucks. I’d be interested to hear the long story sometime, and what exactly the food does or does not do for or to you (as in, in this a stomach/digestive disorder, or something else?). Fennel, or at least fennel seed, is a good stomach-settling herb; I wonder if that’s why you can tolerate it in that soup.
If you can’t eat the chicken meat yourself, just the broth, that guy’s poached chicken meat would make very delicious chicken salad for the rest of your family.
Incidentally, my one can’t-do-without flavouring for soup nowadays is lovage. In German it’s called Maggikraut, and you get a wonderful flavour of maggi without getting the MSG whammy. Very soupy-tasting.
Very very long story. Yeah, pretty much stomach etc etc etc doesn’t really work.
Lovage? What is that? I’ve never heard of it. Is it an herb? I’m off to look it up.
Yes, lovage is a herb. It looks just like celery tops, and tastes somewhat similar (but more so). Perennial, very large – I think mine is about 7ft high right now. If you’ve ever had Maggi seasoning (which, seeing as you spent time in Switzerland, you must have), it’s that kind of flavour. It also happens to be good for stomach problems.