So I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been very busy. Today is Golosá’s 15-year anniversary concert in the new UChicago Logan Arts Center, for which I made a mountain of cookies:
(Oatmeal Chocolate Chip—it’s my favorite. This made 60+ cookies.)
Also I’ve been working on my sweater, which I keep forgetting to take photos of. The sleeves are now attached to the body! Very exciting.
Also Bill and I bought a lovely and very expensive vacuum, which we have been using to obsessively clean the house since Mom is coming in this weekend.
Also the GIANT Lichtenstein Retrospective exhibition (click here) just opened at the Art Institute, so work has been a little crazy.
I also made these lovely potstickers for dinner a few nights ago:
They were very yummy—filled with cabbage, pork, veggies… (Of course, the five that we deep fried were even better) Recipe later.
Also, Bill and I had a fun weekend filled with a game that was basically a real-life Zombie Apocalypse (read about it here) and an insanely awesome old timey jazz concert at a lovely BBQ joint called Honky Tonk. Observe the BBQ platter:
Don’t worry. We split that between three people and still had leftovers. It was sort of insanely good.
SO this brings me to last night. Somehow, between cleaning, baking mountains of cookies and getting ready for this concert tonight, I had time to throw a whole chicken in the pressure cooker and make possibly the best chicken soup I’ve ever had.
Karla, I don’t think you have a pressure cooker, but it’s a dream machine. we cooked this chicken to supreme juicy and tenderness in about 25 minutes and the resulting broth was phenomenal. Here’s the recipe, from Bon Appetit:
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 10 whole black peppercorns
- 4 medium carrots, peeled, halved crosswise
- 2 celery stalks, cut into 3 pieces
- 2 onions, cut into eighths
- 2 bay leaves
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 3 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
- 1 1-inch piece peeled fresh ginger, smashed
- 1 4-pound chicken
- 4 cups low-salt chicken broth
- 1 cup egg noodles
- 3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Preparation
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Combine salt, peppercorns, carrots, celery, onions, bay leaves, thyme sprigs, parsley sprigs, and ginger in the pressure cooker pot. Place chicken on top; add broth and 3 cups water. (The liquid should not rise above the 2/3 marker.) Lock lid in place, making sure vent is sealed. Press Warm; set timer for 24 minutes and press Start to cook.
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Let pressure release naturally. Remove lid and transfer chicken to a platter to cool. Strain broth into a large bowl. Remove carrots and let cool completely; discard other solids from strainer. Slice carrots into rounds. Remove skin from chicken and shred meat from the bones. Discard skin and bones.
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Return broth to the pot. Press Warm; set timer for 20 minutes (add or subtract time as needed) and press Start. Bring to a boil; add shredded chicken, carrot rounds, and noodles and cook until noodles are al dente, about 10 minutes, depending on thickness of noodles. Press Cancel to stop cooking. Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with chopped parsley.
Now, I used these noodles that looked like the SUPREME chicken noodle soup noodles, but turned out to be something called “dumpling noodles.” They made the soup a little thicker and ended up cooking into dumpling-like masses, which were actually very good. Nice surprise at the end. That’s why our soup looks so cloudy, but I can assure you that the plain broth was just as heavenly.
We had this with fresh baked bread from our local Latin grocery store (Sunshine Market)—no really it was so hot when I picked it up, I thought it might burn me—and had a lovely dinner on the porch at dusk, right before the spectacular lightning show.
Yes, those are Summer Shandys. Summer has arrived in Chicago.
Our Sister Kitchens 