Now Part 2 of 2 Ginger Chicken: The Chicken Soup

Now that I have gotten some sleep... and I do mean some, since it was quite elusive till after 01:30. Didn't help that I was stuffed like a puppy and paid dearly for the excessiveness; but it was SO GOOD, causing us all to stuff ourselves like puppies and prompting The CrazyOne to immediately request the soup for lunch. Fabulous idea and taking out the left over soup from the fridge,
opening it up,
~inhailing~


Oohhhhhhh-hooo-ohoo...
Sorry about that,
um... back to the post.
Before I begin, I forgot to mention that I make the ginger chicken only upon request or when the Fam is fighting off colds or we are doing well but right in the trenches of germ season. I love to use fresh hot peppers in these dishes, but dried red pepper does a fine job as a pinch hitter.
(In the voice of Paul Harvey) Now, here's the rest of the post.
I will warn you now, don't get wrapped up in the first picture of this post. I have been in a strange mood for the past week, finally feeling good enough to get my home clean a bit at a time and by time I got around to making myself get this dish started, I was not in the mood for making this but so in the mood to eat it. This meal is VERY simplistic and not too much of what's pictured was used.

What I did use:
The three chicken thighs that were left from the original meal. Had to fight the Unfortunates off of these last three pieces.
The stock from the original meal--or is it called broth? I will call it stock for now.
Half of a medium-small left over onion.
About 2/3C of baby carrots (pre sliced)
One chive (or as some call it green onion--I call them chives, green onions are larger to me).
Two large garlic cloves.
One stalk of celery.
Red bell pepper.
Cilantro.
Canola and extra virgin olive oil.
Lime juice.
White wine vinegar.
Water.
Rotini noodles.
Grey sea salt.
Small sprig of not so fresh rosemary.
Celery seeds.
Black peppercorns.
Red pepper.


1. First, I looked at all my ingredients laid out and said, ... okay maybe I shouldn't repeat what I muttered to myself. Suffice to say I remembered that this meal's flavor was all but completed, I was only taking it down a different avenue without fuss. Key words, "without fuss." So I grabbed another small bowl and sliced up a stalk of rinsed chives. Then remembering how I love chives and cilantro and lime, AND how it IS apart of my original recipe, I grabbed out the fridge a VERY tired bunch of cilantro and picked out the greenest of the bunch, washed and chopped them till I had about 2 1/2Tbs of it. I tossed that into the bowl with the chives. Set this aside for this is the bowl that will be added at the end when you turn the pot off and you are about to serve.
Second, preparing the sauté bowl; I grabbed a stalk of celery (what the hell am I going to do with the rest? No one here eats celery outside of it being in meals?), washed it and thinly sliced it--not paper thin-- till I had less than about 3Tbs of the stuff. Threw that into another bowl. Taking the baby carrots, I got out about a handful, washed and sliced them diagonally. Threw them in with the celery. Then I took the almost out the door, very odiferous half of onion that laid in the fridge for more than just five days and diced that up adding that too, to the bowl with the carrots and celery. The garlic cloves I skinned, crushed, then sliced, and I took out of the freezer the last of the sliced and frozen red bell pepper. I keep sliced bell pepper laid out flat, in a zip lock freezer bag, in the freezer because bell pepper is great in dishes, but not always the entire thing, and I do hate waste. I chopped up about 2tsp of the stuff and added that to the sauté bowl. With this bowl, I kept in mind how much exactly I need to bring flavor but not overwhelm. Celery isn't a veg to mess with, carrots can easily become like one of the head gangs in Gangs of New York and bell pepper can easily become the life of the party if allowed. Be easy but don't be scared. Remember, the ginger is the main flavor her, everyone else are just supporting actors.

2. I took down my (finally--its been dirty for the past week and a half just sitting in the sink) clean 3qt, Calphalon, hard anodized professional pot from its rightful place of glory next to its brothers and sisters--okay so I love my pots; Really love my set of these pots. I love you StudMan, your the best! Drizzled some canola oil in with the extra virgin olive oil, tossed in a dash of sea salt and heated my baby up on about medium high. Once the salt started to pop, I dumped in the sauté bowl and let the heat, oil and salt work it's magic upon the first phase of the soup. Once the onions began to get glassy, I removed the fare from the pot back into the bowl, placed the pot back on the heated eye and added about 1/2C water from the hot standby tea pot and perhaps about 2Tbs of white wine vinegar to the pot. I deglazed it for only about 60 seconds, enough to get the glaze off the bottom of the pot from the sauté, before the juice boiled too far down, I poured it into the sauté bowl and set it all aside. 3. Putting the pot back on the still hot eye, I put in what I had left of noodles. Our noodle stash is sadly lacking. I didn't realize how low we were on any noodles till I was looking for extra large egg noodles; we only had enough of those to fill a 1/2C then I looked for spiral noodles. While searching for those (I really need to re organize the pantry now that I feel better, the Unfortunates really ran-sacked the place) I saw that we had hardly enough noodles of any kind for one person let alone three-four people. Then I struck gold, I found the new box of Rotini noodles we were going to use for a noodle salad. It'll do. I added them to the pot I had filled with water from HotStandBy. While all this was boiling, I belatedly remembered that the chicken still needed to be deboned, skinned and cut to into about 4cm long pieces. Removing my rings, I made quick work of the three left over chicken thighs, tossing aside the skins but keeping the bones to add with the meat.

4. Only allowing the noodles to boil for as long as it took me to quickly prep the thighs, I poured off the water, put the pot back on the hot eye, added the sauté bowl of goods and the chicken bowl of goods to the noodles. Then I remembered; you didn't prep the ginger chicken stock. Damn. So quickly I grabbed the now two empty bowls, a spoon and the Ziplock container full, nearly to the brim of unsegregated stock. I scrapped off the fat that was so yellow thanks to the curry. Next I dug out the second layer of stock and added that directly to the pot; as you can see, that part was still pretty cold and congealed. Now, to get the last layer of heaven from the container, I threw it into the microwave for 50 seconds. Once heated, I strained what was left of the stock, dug out about 1/4C of the ginger slices, a few pieces of meat that fell off from the original dish and added all that to the pot and covered it to get it boiling.



5. While waiting for the fair to start boiling, I prepped the only spices I added. First I ground far less than a pinch of celery seed, then took the leaves off of about half of the sprig of the not so fresh rosemary, pounding it to crush it up. Once I got it pulverized it broke up fairly easily. I added about 16 peppercorns, crushed those too and added it, along with a good few shakes of red pepper a dash more of sea salt to the pot that was still struggling to heat up. Oh, but once that pot got going, the smell was delish!!!I cooked it till the noodles were just moving from andante, turned off the eye, and added the cilantro and chives bowl of goods. Normally this is also where you ad nearly half of a fresh squeezed lime, or about a teaspoon of lime juice. I of course forgot till I was two bites into the soup and added the lime then.



Need I mention again how wonderful this meal is? Yes, that is the Drifters, This Magic Moment, you hear playing in the back ground. It is that good.
The last picture is Unfortunate BabyGirl happily bouncing around while I lie back contentedly with the rest of the Unfortunates watching American Idol: Hollywood. Eating in front of the t.v. is not my thing, but I do make exceptions once in a blue moon.