Now that we’ve entered *Soup Season* I’ve found myself making many a soup. I’ve twice made Acorn Squash soup (from a reliable NYT Butternut Squash recipe), Chile sin Carne (from a Rancho Gordo recipe), Laila Gohar’s Green Minestrone (from her Studio Lunch texts, which I recommend signing up for), and of course chicken soup. I would guess that the latter is a routine for many of us during flu and cold season. I’ve made it lots of different ways. To speak generally, I’ve made it in a pinch with leftover roast chicken, shredded the next day, and with water plus Better than Bouillon, in lieu of stock; and I’ve also made it from a whole bird, slowly simmered with vegetables to create a stock. I’ve made it simply with just chicken and vegetables, and also with rice or pasta. There is a lot of variation possible along that spectrum, and I’ve finally found my favorite method. I cobbled it together using a couple different recipes as well as my own soup intuition (soup-tuition?). Ever since reading Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen, I’ve been thinking more deeply about the adjustments I make to my favorite recipes, unconsciously developing a new version until they evolve into something wholly their own (I hope everyone enjoys my Taylor Swift reference). I plan to write about this more in a future newsletter, so this is not the last time I’ll be mentioning this wonderful book (it’s not out yet in the US, but can be pre-ordered here).
I was looking the other day at my grandmother Adeline’s recipes, which my dear Aunt Barb kindly offered me copies of several years ago. I will shamefully admit that they sat untouched for awhile—in the vortex of pre-pandemic NYC office life, as I was, cooking much less often, and easily distracted by the latest Alison Roman or Melissa Clark recipe, or by the new cookbooks always coming out. I deeply regret not asking her for them myself, before she became unwell, but I can’t say I was much of a cook back then, as it’s been many many years since she developed dementia.
I copied them out in my recipe notebook, in order to annotate them with missing details, and make small adjustments to fit my style of cooking (e.g. there is a conspicuous lack of garlic…). Like many home cooks of her era, she wrote her recipes on index cards (I have one written in her hand) so the details are sparse, to say the least. Probably because she wasn’t creating the index cards as a guide or recipe for anyone—just as a quick and easy reminder to herself. She could probably make all of the dishes in her sleep. All the same, it makes me conscious of the wide gulf of experience between her generation and mine. There was an assumption of a certain level of basic cooking skill and technique that many of us Millennials don’t have, that I learned later in my twenties/early thirties/and onward. A lot of instructions you would expect to guide you (cooking times, heat level, etc), are left out. But I digress…
I had chicken in the fridge for soup and decided to start with her Chicken & Pastina Soup, which I remember eating on visits to Buffalo to see my grandparents. Pastina is an Italian-American staple, but I actually have never purchased it or used it myself. I couldn’t find it at my local, walking-distance market so I decided to make do with something I already had on hand—a wonderful semolina pasta from Sardinia called Fregola, equally tiny, that my sister’s partner Kevin gave me. Nonni’s recipes are somewhat reliant on canned food (as was common in her era), so needless to say her soup recipe calls for store-bought stock. I never use store-bought stock anymore, and will instead opt for water that I season as I go, either with salt, or Better than Bouillon (a hack I learned from Alison Roman’s more recent recipes). But with chicken soup in particular it makes sense, to me, to make a stock from the chicken that will end up in the resulting soup (put the bones and skin to use—they are packed with nutrients and give you so much flavor), so I make my own.
My current favorite chicken stock method comes from Molly Baz’s chicken soup recipe (from Cook This Book). Instead of a whole bird, she calls for four chicken legs and 2lbs of wings, which is so much easier. I’m never going back! While Molly’s chicken soup is excellent, I enjoyed beginning with her stock method and then moving on to Nonni’s recipe. Nonni’s addition of tomato lends an incredibly flavorful savoriness (and a nice color) to the soup, and I always welcome the addition of greens. I used fresh tomato, whereas Nonni called for canned. Both are excellent but different. The flavor you get from the fresh tomato is more fresh and acidic, but subtler. Unless you prepared it you may not realize tomato is an ingredient, but it adds incredible depth (after I added the tomato to the Dutch oven and it became aromatic, Reed shouted from the next room: “what did you just add to the pot??”). I had escarole instead of Swiss chard on hand, so I adjusted her instructions to accommodate leafier greens, adding them to the pot at the end (a hardier green like chard takes longer to cook, whereas escarole could become overcooked rapidly). For the pasta I had half a bag of the tiny Fregola Sarda. If you plan to have leftovers, you’ll want to adjust pasta use/quantity accordingly. I’m only cooking for two so we always have leftovers. If pasta is left in overnight, it will continue to absorb your precious stock, getting more and more overcooked, and making the soup less liquid. I recommend adding less pasta at first, and removing and discarding any extra before storing your leftover soup. Ditto any leftover greens, which will get overly wilted and slimy. I didn’t remove either this time out of laziness. The Fregola Sarda has a lot of chew and bite, so it was actually fine the next day, and there were very few greens remaining. But all things being equal, I highly recommend removing them if you can.
But back to the recipe! You’ll find it below (minus Molly Baz’s stock preparation which I am not at liberty to include—I highly recommend investing in her book and trying her recipe). Please tell me about your own soup traditions! What soup do you remember from your grandma’s kitchen table?
Xo
Nonni’s Chicken & Pastina Soup (Angie’s Version):
Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped or 2 large leeks, white and green parts separated (white parts sliced on the bias/green parts reserved for another use)
3-5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 medium turnip, parsnip, or carrot, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
6ish cups homemade chicken stock made from the chicken that will go into the soup (OR a carton or two of store-bought stock)
2-4 celery stalks, thinly sliced on the bias
1-2 cups fresh tomato, chopped (OR 1 cup San Marzano canned tomato, crushed)
1 large bunch of swiss chard or escarole, chopped
2 cups shredded pre-cooked chicken
1 cup small pasta like Pastina or Fregola Sarda
kosher salt
extra virgin olive oil
Method:
Heat 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat and add the leeks (white part only), garlic, turnip. Saute, stirring frequently, until softened and aromatic.
Add 3/4 cup hot chicken stock, along with the fresh tomato, and cook 10 minutes more until translucent.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a pot of heavily salted water until al dente. Drain and set aside. Add a bit of olive oil if it’s going to be sitting.
Strain the remaining stock into the Dutch oven and bring to a simmer. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
If using a hardy green like swiss chard, add it to the pot now.
Add the shredded chicken and celery and simmer 4-5 minutes.
Add the al dente pasta and the greens if using a leafier green like escarole.
Ladle into bowls and top with freshly ground black pepper, and alongside toasted bread of your choice, buttered with salted Kerrygold if you deserve a treat (which you do)
Note: if planning for leftovers, remove any excess pasta and greens before storing overnight. The pasta will continue to absorb the liquid and get softer, and the greens will become too wilted.