Back in August I was feeling a little on the sniffly, sore-throat, swollen-gland side, so naturally I wanted some soothing comfort food. I emailed my mom asking for her chicken noodle soup recipe I loved growing up, expecting it to be an easy, throw-together kind of recipe.

Oh how wrong I was.

I had no idea my mom’s (well, grandma’s) recipe entailed making your own stock, cooling it overnight, cooking more vegetables the next day, cooking the egg noodles, etc. For an average weekend this would be no big deal, but the idea of doing all that work feverish and sick was just a big no. So the email sat dormant, until I realized I would be cooking my favorite roast chicken and thus have the carcass to make stock (bing!). Since I usually eat a leg and a little breast when I roast a whole chicken, and then do whatever with the leftovers, it felt like the perfect opportunity to eat a bit of roast chicken, and then use the rest of the delicious meat (plus the carcass) to make the ultimate chicken noodle soup.

Some people would call the list of ingredients and recipe pretty pedestrian – but as the saying goes, simplicity is the sign of perfection. The flavor of the stock is superb, and cooking the vegetables separately the next day really adds a nice layer. Although my mom has always served egg noodles with her soup, you can really use any short pasta. Either way, this dish is simple, but time consuming – something I find in most soups I love.

Stock veg!

About to simmer…

Many, many hours later.

Lifeblood.

Mirepoix, sauteed.

Eat your heart out, Campbells.

Grandma would be proud.

—

Grandma Esther’s Chicken Noodle Soup

People find making chicken stock very daunting, but trust me – it’s one of the easiest things you’ll ever do.

Serves 6-7

Ingredients

To make the stock:

• One 3-4 lb roaster/fryer chicken carcass, including the skin (or one 3-4 lb whole roaster/fryer chicken, rinsed)
• 1 large yellow (not sweet) onion, cut into quarters
• 2-3 celery stalks with tops left on, roughly chopped
• 1 large carrot, roughly chopped
• 3 bay leaves
• 10 whole peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt

To make the soup:

• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 medium yellow (not sweet) onion, chopped
• 3 large carrots, peeled and sliced fairly thin
• 1 tablespoon butter
• salt
• pepper
• a dash of dried thyme
• 8 oz egg noodles

Directions

1.) The day before you want to enjoy the soup, make the stock. In a large stock pot or Dutch oven, combine all the stock ingredients and pour about 10-12 cups water to cover (add a little more if your chicken isn’t submerged completely). Bring to a boil and skim off the scum (floating fat raft – whee!) and then turn down to a very low simmer (either low or 1-2 on your stove knob). Cook for 4-5 hours. You want the flavor to really develop, but you don’t want it to boil and reduce too much. Once ready, remove from the heat, and strain the stock. Discard the veggies, and if you cooked a whole chicken, set the chicken aside to cool.

2.) Let the stock cool covered overnight or for at least 8 hours. If you used a whole chicken, pull all the meat from the bird in bite-size pieces, and store in the fridge until the next day. Save and freeze the carcass to make your next batch of stock. (Note: my mom uses almost only white meat for the soup, but I love dark meat and happily add it to mine.)

3.) Make your noodles the night before as well. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook the egg noodles until very al dente – they will cook a little more in the broth, trust me. Drain and rinse with cold water (to stop the cooking process) and store in a container, refrigerated, until the next day.

4.) Once the stock has cooled overnight, skim most of the accumulated fat from the top (leaving a little for flavor). Return to the stove and heat over medium-high heat.

5.) While the stock heats up, cook the vegetables. In a large saute pan, melt the butter over medium heat and then add the onion, carrot, and celery. Season to taste and sprinkle with a bit of dried thyme. Saute the veggies over medium heat for 8-10 minutes until they’re cooked, but still have a bit of a bite to them (al dente).

6.) Once the stock is hot, add the veggies and pulled chicken meat. Let everything come up to an almost-simmer. We always leave the noodles out and let everyone add as much (or little) noodles as they like. Keeping the noodles out also prevents them from becoming mushy from sitting in the broth too long.

© Jessica J. for jonesing for..., 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chicken, family recipe, savory, soup, vegetables

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Here it is. The ultimate. The #1. The quintessential dish that is pure Christmas to me. Chruscikis.

Traditional Polish fried cookies which resemble either a bow-tie or angel’s wings (depending on your heritage/what your grandma says…) which seem simple on the surface, but in the end are some of the messiest, and somewhat labor intensive cookies ever.  Yet they’re worth every drop of splattered oil and puff of powdered sugar that ends up on the floor.

This is probably the oldest recipe we have in our family, which we know goes back to my great-grandma Jean who immigrated to the US when she was about 7 in the late 1800′s, and it probably goes back even farther than that. The ingredients are dead simple (eat your heart out, Martha) and the dough comes together very easily, it’s just all about rolling the dough incredibly thin and working very quickly once you get to the frying part. But they’re just so good warm, I cannot begin to describe it. I mean yes, they are basically fried dough, but come on – we all know how awesome that is.

So Wesolych Swiat! to my fellow Poles, and I hope you all enjoy the  most cherished part of my Polish culinary heritage!

Mommie Dearest on the hunt for the recipe…

Found!

Yellow and white sparkly…

Sticky dough and beaters.

Floured surface.

Rolling…

Cutting…

Shaping…

Bring the top end through the slit and voila! Bow-tie!

Perspective.

Bubbling oil (well over halfway through, thus it being so cloudy).

Fry!

Mmmm, fried.

Ready to dust.

Snow shower!

Dusted.

Gently stored.

Fragile and perfect and Polish.

—

Chruscikis

Based on my great-grandma Jean’s recipe.

Makes about 3 dozen.

The tricky thing about these is you really need to watch your fryer oil temperature. It goes up insanely fast and the cookies will start to cook faster and faster as you work through the batches, so either adjust for temperature or time as you go.

Ingredients

• 4 egg yolks
• 4 tsp sugar
• 4 tsp vinegar
• 4 tsp brandy
• 1 cup flour, sifted
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• Vegetable oil for frying

Directions

1.) In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a bowl with a hand mixer, beat the egg yolks well. Add the sugar, vinegar, brandy, and flour, and beat until well mixed.

2.) In a large pot or dutch oven, pour in enough oil so you have about 3 inches in the pot. Bring it up to a medium-high heat.

3.) While the oil heats, roll out dough on floured board to about 1/10 of an inch (extremely thin, almost as thin as a tortilla).

4.) Cut dough into strips approximately 3 inches long by 1 inch wide. Then cut an inch-long slit in center of strip and pull one end through the slit making a “knot”.

5.) Lay out several sheets of paper towels on a counter or cooling rack. Drop a bit of dough to test the oil temperature. It should bubble and brown in about 60-90 seconds. If ready, drop cookies in 2 at a time into hot oil and brown to very light brown, flipping with tongs. It should take about 30-60 seconds per side. Remove and drain on paper towels.

6.) Once they have cooled for a few minutes, sprinkle the cookies with powdered sugar (through a fine mesh strainer) on both sides.

Store in a very airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

© Jessica J. for jonesing for..., 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: christmas, cookies, dessert, family recipe, favorite, indulge, sweet

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Happy Autumn, everyone! Well, maybe not happy, since this is the weather that greeted me yesterday:

Talk about inspiration for something warming.

You know that scene in “Ratatouille” when Anton Ego is stopped dead in his tracks when he smells and tastes Remy’s ratatouille because it so acutely reminds him of his mother and his childhood? That’s what this dish is to me. Not only does this chili remind me of autumn and thus it was my first dish I happily made for the season, but it so embodies my vision of my mother in the kitchen.  Almost every Sunday in the fall she would make a huge batch of soup or stew, whether it be chili, potato soup, beef tomato rice, chicken noodle, etc, and always make it an all-day affair. Even when I would come home once in awhile from Cornell my mom would still make a batch at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning so I’d have a few Tupperware containers to take back with me.

The chili was always the best though. I remember asking my mother for the recipe time and time again to which she would always reply “There’s no real recipe – it’s a method, and every batch is different, you know that.”

So here is my version of my mother’s method, which she learned from her own mother.  It’s such a simple dish, with very few (and cheap) ingredients. It’s all about time and layering flavors (like any good soup or stew) so this isn’t something you can whip together on the fly and eat 20 minutes later (in my dreams).  I use almost all the same ingredients my mom and grandma do and did, except I change the cooking method a bit to keep the texture of the veggies a bit sharper and I up the spice level quite a bit.  The celery adds such a nice freshness to the chili and alongside the sweet tomatoes, nothing feels or smells more like autumn to me than this dish.

Grandma Esther’s Chili (with my interpretation)

Makes about 10 cups chili

I try to keep things a little figure-friendly by using a mixture of 90/10 ground beef with lean ground turkey.  I also double the veggies to give the chili a really hearty feel with fewer cals than adding more meat.  And the Tabasco is not a usual contender here – I only realized well into the process that I had no cayenne in my pantry (although I am still 100% sure it is in there somewhere) so I subbed with the sauce since it’s just cayenne and vinegar.

Ingredients

• 12 ounces 80/20 or 90/10 ground beef
• 4 ounces ground turkey
• 1 green bell pepper, diced, divided in half
• 1½ unsweet yellow onions, diced, divided in half
• 1 cup diced celery, divided in half
• 1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes with green chiles
• 1 28-ounce can tomato sauce + 1 14-ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes, no salt added
• ½ tsp paprika
• 1½ TBL chili powder
• ¼ tsp cayenne (or 2 dashes Tabasco if you realize you don’t have cayenne… like me)
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions

1. In a large dutch oven, brown the meat by breaking it up with the back of a wooden spoon or fork.  Once the meat starts releasing some fat, toss in half the green pepper, onion and celery.  Season liberally with salt and cook over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes until very tender.  Taste for seasoning.
2. Once the veggies are tender, add the spices and stir, letting them cook for a few minutes to really bring out their flavor.  Add the 2 cans of diced tomatoes and 28-ounce can of tomato sauce. Stir, and bring to a low boil.  Do not taste for seasoning here – the flavor will change quite a bit as it cooks so if you have a heavy hand here, it will become an anvil later.
3. Simmer over medium heat, covered, for about an hour.  Stir every 10 minutes.  Once an hour has elapsed, begin tasting for seasoning. Add more salt, paprika, chili powder, cayenne as needed.
4. Add the rest of the veggies and as much more tomato sauce as you want (depending on how saucy vs. thick you prefer it).  The point here is to have some very tender, soft veggies with some that still have a bit of a bite so you get a lot of texture and layered flavors.  Again, season for taste.
5. Cook an additional hour, stirring every 10 minutes.
6. Serve with shredded Colby jack cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips, fresh chives, goldfish crackers, saltines, or anything you prefer.  Chili is the ultimate accessory-friendly dish!

© Jessica J. for jonesing for..., 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: autumn, family recipe, savory, soup, tomato, vegetables

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People often ask me what inspired me to cook — when it happened, why it happened, etc.  I have a myriad of memories that led to me becoming the cook I am today, from being inspired by my sister when she was a pastry chef to becoming obsessed with Food Network when I was 17. The earliest memory of the bunch being an odd obsession with this gorgeous illustrated copy of “The Junior Fannie Farmer Cookbook” in my elementary school’s library when I was 8 or so.  It was only recently I remembered it and brought it up to my mother, who remarked nostalgically “I thought it was so bizarre at the time.”  Thanks, Mom!

But currently it’s my maternal grandmother Esther’s recipes that inspire me the most right now.  I never got to meet her, sadly, but in a way, I feel like I got the ‘cooking gene’ from her.  Although she mostly cooked at home, the rare exception would be Fish Fry Fridays at the bar my grandparents owned many moons ago called “Stick’s Tap” in downtown Milwaukee.  The only recipe we have from Stick’s is her coleslaw (also a winner), but my mother keeps all her other recipes in this ancient little wooden box under our microwave at home, and they’re always incredibly simple, cheap, and tasty.  Few are very summer-friendly (mostly awesome heavy meat action, thick sauces, etc.) but this (like the coleslaw) is one of the exceptions.

I like to think of this dish as ‘pickles unpickled.’  It’s like eating the pickling jar contents before you boil, seal and let sit for a few weeks.  Don’t approach this dish if you’re afraid of vinegar, that’s all I can say.  It’s got a handful of ingredients often seen in dill pickles, comes together in about 15 minutes, and can be eaten straight away, or chilled for a bit if you prefer it a little more refreshing. This is a popular side dish in any Slavic cuisine (for my family this means Polish but I saw something similar to this dish everywhere when I lived in Russia).  It’s sweet, sour, cold, and a fantastic side dish for any grilling or BBQ.

Grandma Esther’s Sweet and Sour Cucumbers

Makes 4 servings

My grandma’s original recipe was quite heavy on the sour cream (because she was so awesome) so to keep things light and fresh, I go heavy with the vinegar to tone down the creaminess and add fresh dill to keep things summery.

Ingredients

• 2 English (seedless) cucumbers, sliced thin (about ¼” thick, you can go peeled or unpeeled here, whatever you fancy)
• 1 small, plain yellow onion, sliced very thin (almost shaved)
• ¼ cup red wine vinegar
• 2 TBL sour cream
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• salt
• pepper
• 1 TBL chopped, fresh dill

Directions

1.) Toss the sliced cucumbers with about a teaspoon of salt and then lay out on paper towels. Let stand about 15 minutes and blot off all the produced moisture (this is the bitter stuff we don’t want).  Set aside.

2.) In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together vinegar, sour cream, sugar, dill, and about 1/8 teaspoon pepper with 1 teaspoon salt.  Taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary.

3.) Add the cucumbers and onion and toss to coat.  Can be eaten immediately or let chill in the fridge for about a half hour before enjoying, tossing every 10 minutes or so.

© Jessica J. for jonesing for..., 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: family recipe, favorite, salad, salty, savory, sidedish, summer

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