Michael Symon's Live to Cook_ Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen - Michael Symon [20]
Remove the chicken from the pot and allow to cool enough to handle comfortably. Pick all the meat from it, shredding it by hand and discarding the skin and bones. Discard the bay leaves. Cover and refrigerate the meat and soup separately overnight or until the soup is thoroughly chilled.
Remove the fat that has congealed on top of the soup and reserve it for the dumplings. Set the soup over medium-low heat and allow it to come gradually back up to a simmer while you make the dumplings.
To make the dumplings, measure the reserved chicken fat. You need ½ cup. If necessary, add butter to make ½ cup. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the milk and fat to a simmer. Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Remove the pan from the heat and add the flour, stirring with a heavy wooden spoon until the flour has absorbed all the milk and the resulting dough pulls away from the sides of the pan. Add the tarragon and then the eggs, one at a time, stirring until each egg is incorporated.
Drop, scoop, or cut the dough one tablespoon at a time into the soup. My method is to wet a cutting board and press portions of the sticky dough into thin sheets about ¼ inch thick and 1½ inches wide, then cut into about ½-inch pieces, and scrape them into the soup. Simmer the dough for about 10 minutes, then add the chicken, returning to a simmer, and serve.
SPICY TOMATO AND BLUE CHEESE SOUP
There’s always an exception to every rule, and my tomato soup is it. It’s one soup that can be made all year round because canned San Marzanos are consistently good. This is a dish, God, I’ve been making it since my time at Players nearly twenty years ago. It’s so easy and so delicious that it was my long-time chef Frankie Rogers’s go-to soup, the get-myself-out-of-the-weeds soup. San Marzano tomatoes, some aromatic vegetables, Sriracha sauce (one of my favorite condiments, available in most supermarkets in the ethnic aisle and in Asian markets) for heat, and blue cheese for richness. It comes together in no time.
Serves 4 to 6
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
Kosher salt
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1 28-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes, with their juice
1½ cups Chicken Stock
¾ cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons Sriracha sauce
1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves
½ cup Roth Käse Buttermilk Blue cheese (see Sources)
Heat the olive oil in a 4-quart pot over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and a three-fingered pinch of salt and sweat for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to sweat for 2 more minutes. Add the tomatoes, their juice, and the stock and bring to a simmer. Add the cream, Sriracha sauce, and oregano and simmer for 45 minutes.
Pour the soup into a blender, add the blue cheese, and blend until smooth, working in batches if needed. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean pot, taste, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and reheat to serve. The soup will keep, covered in the refrigerator, for a few days.
BBLT (BELLY, BACON, LETTUCE, AND TOMATO)
This is my pork love child. It combines two forms of pork belly: braised pork belly that you sauté until crisp and serve warm and cured, and smoked pork belly, aka bacon. With all this great fat, you need some serious contrast, and it’s provided by spicy chile, peppery greens, and acidic pickled tomato.
Serves 1
1 6-inch piece of Braised Pork Belly, sliced ⅓ inch thick
1 6-inch French roll
1 tablespoon Aioli
2 slices crisp cooked bacon
1 pickled chile, thinly sliced
1 pickled green tomato, sliced
¼ cup loosely packed fresh watercress
Heat a medium sauté pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, brown the pork belly slices until they’re crisp, about 2 minutes per side. Split the roll, slather with the aioli, and layer the pork belly, bacon, chili, tomato, and watercress inside. Serve.
SOPPRESSATA