Chicken Soup

So last weekend whole young chickens went on sale at the super market -- $.69 a pound. I bought two. One will be made in my crockpot later, but Thursday I made chicken soup with the first.

5.5 lb chicken
4 onion
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
2 dashes thyme
2.5 T + 1 t salt
5 chopped carrots
5 stalks celery
4 eggs
2 cups flour

I put the chicken into the freezer when I first bought it, so Tuesday night I took it out to defrost. Unfortunately when I went I pulled it out, it was still partly frozen. I ran some cold water on it, but I was on a time limit today and needed to get it into the pot. There are innards placed inside the chicken that needed to be removed first. So I ran cold water into the cavity. When this wasn't going very quickly, I switched to warm water--I figured I was going to be immersing the whole thing in water soon and it wouldn't make too much of a difference. I finally (after ~5 minutes, it was mostly defrosted) got the innards loose and moved the rest of the chicken into the large stock pot I'm borrowing.

To the pot I added I coarsely chopped onion, 2 bay leaves, and ~8 quarts of water (I used a 3 quart pot filled most of the way 3 times to get water into the stock pot. I added hot water, but apparently, cold is best). I then looked at several recipes for boiling chicken and a few more for chicken soup and decided to add a couple of cloves of garlic and some thyme. Many recipes suggested rosemary, but I didn't have any when I started. I then put the pot on high until it started to boil.

After it boiled, I reduced the heat to medium low, and then fiddled with the temperature until a simmer was maintained. I also added a lid to the pot at this point.  Once I was satisfied that it was simmering, I actually went grocery shopping. This means that I added rosemary (which I had been meaning to get) about an hour into it simmering. About an hour and a half in, I poked at the chicken with a fork. The fork went in easily, but the chicken had been floating one direction for a while. I flipped it over and waited another 20 minutes. I then used my colander to fish out the chicken. I placed the colander over a bowl and stuck it in the fridge to cool. I left the new chicken stock on the stove as I was planing on reheating it later.

Thus began a three and a half hour wait. The time limit I mentioned was because I had meetings during most of this time. Thus a shorter wait would probably be fine; the point is to let the chicken cook enough to deal with. After I got back, the stock was still uncomfortably hot to touch, so my judgement about leaving it out was probably good. There was also waaayy to much stock. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to add everything else, so I removed 8 cups into a pitcher. The pitcher went into the fridge. When it cools, I'll freeze it in two cup portions for use in recipes.

The chicken was also cool all the way through. I started to take the chicken off the bone, then realized that I was using frozen vegetables and they should probably defrost. So I removed the chopped carrots from my freezer and added two packages (5 chopped carrots). I also took out the celery and chopped it up. It was really hard to chop, so I ran it under some water for a while. This made it easier to cut through, but it was still very cold to my hand. I chopped up 3 small onions, and added them and the celery to the stock. I then turned the heat on to low. After that I finished removing the chicken from the bone. It was fairly easy and the chicken had in fact, cooked through.

When I was done with the chicken, I went to make nokedli, which are like little dumplings. I used the recipe here: http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/hungariannoodlesdumplings/r/nokedli.htm although I only used 3/2 cups water. (I also added the ingredients in the wrong order). Instead of adding these to boiling water, I turned the heat up on the soup to bring it to a boil. I scooped the mixture onto a flat cheese grater and let if fall though. Even though I had added less water than the recipe called for, I think that it ended up a bit too liquidy. This meant that the pieces were smaller than nokedli should be. However, it cooked properly. I then added the chicken, let it cook for a couple more minutes, and then turned off the heat.

I scooped out a bowl and tasted--fantastic. I then added a bunch of cheddar cheese to it. It was fantastic. I then waited for it to cool. I froze a few portions, but most of it headed to a potluck. 

Lasagna

So a couple of weeks ago I picked up a 3.5 quart crockpot. I actually made the bell peppers and tomatoes in this, but the celebration of getting it was this lasagna (which I made last Sunday).

http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/slow-cooker-spinach-and-ricotta-lasagna-with-romaine-salad-00000000052378/index.html

The recipe for just lasagna uses the first six ingredients. My grocery only had creamed frozen spinach, so I used that and hoped it wouldn't matter too much (I mean, really, you're adding it to lots of cheese, so the cream part shouldn't make a difference). I also selected a garlic and basil flavored marinara sauce.

So making this was straightforward. Mixed the cheese and spinach, and the pasta sauce and water in different bowls. Added sauce, then noodles, then sauce, then spinach, then mozzarella and repeated. The recipe is meant for a slightly larger crockpot, but with enough breaking the noodles formed a single layer fairly well. The spinach mixture was a bit difficult to spread which resulted in the layers of sauce mixing. This was annoying, but not really a problem. When I got to adding the last noodles, mozzarella, Parmesan and marinara sauce, it seemed like I didn't have enough sauce left. I worried a bit that I had been using too much, but eventually convinced myself that I hadn't. But still, the noodles were not completely covered. As they cook in the pot, I mixed a bit of extra water in to make sure that they would be fine. I then sprinkled over the last of the mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.

This got left alone on low for 4 hours. I then shared it for dinner with a friend. It was very good. It was a bit difficult to get out of the crockpot. After I removed the first piece, cutting more seemed to push some of the filling out into the gap. However, this simply meant that we ate a bit more filling. It was so good that we both had two pieces.

After this I took advantage of the removable crock, and just stuck the whole thing in the fridge. I meant to portion it out later, but ended up just taking pieces from the crock as I went. It was much easier to cut pieces out when it had cooled. It seemed pretty uniform in height, so it might be that I had imagined it was spilling filling when I was cutting it hot. I was also happy to put off some of the dishes to a day when I wasn't really cooking.

Lasagna is great because it reheats beautifully. It was also good cold on the day that I brought it in for lunch and couldn't get to a microwave.  It was also nice because I know that spinach is good for me, and it was cooked into tasty cheese.