wherein Liz cooks chicken soup

[edenfalling]

Today's experiment:

Get up 45 minutes early. Chop up a bunch of baby carrots, three stalks of celery, a medium sized white onion, and four chicken thighs. Toss in crockpot. Add 250ml bottle of white wine (Chardonnay, because it was all that was available; what is it with Chardonnay anyway? there are so many better white wines out there!), 1 cup-ish of water, one ramen chicken bouillon packet, 1.5 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp-ish black pepper, 1/2 tsp-ish basil, and one bay leaf. Cover, plug in, set to LOW, and leave for work.

7.5 hours later, come home. Appreciate nice warm food smells, add another 1/2 cup-ish water, let cook another half hour. Unplug, remove bay leaf, put majority into Tupperware and fridge, serve one bowl, eat. (Pause to spit out tiny bay leaf fragment that apparently fell off the main leaf during cooking. My dad's always-get-served-the-bay-leaf curse holds true down the generations, it seems. *sigh*)

Results: I think if I try this again, I will go a bit lighter on the pepper and basil, and add more water from the start. Also, maybe I could get fancy and cook and toss in some noodles toward the very end. But I don't really mind peppery soups, so all in all, I declare success.

:-D

Comments

[edenfalling]

It is slightly adapted from a generic chicken & vegetables recipe in the terribly old came-with-the-pot "cookbook" that my mom still has from her first crockpot, back in... the 70s, I guess? She left it with me on my birthday and I must remember to give it back to her on Mother's Day. But basically what I did was keep the vegetables at the same levels, use only a third as much chicken (1lb rather than 3lb) partly so as to leave more room for broth and partly because my pot is 2qt rather than 3.5qt, and add the bay leaf and a bunch more liquid so as to create proper soup instead of a bit of residual sauce.

I am not remotely qualified to play around with new and exciting spice combinations -- I would need a LOT more cooking experience for that -- but I do generally feel capable of tweaking quantities in existing recipes. So that's something.

Oooh, fajitas! Yum. :-) (Someday I must figure out what cilantro actually tastes like. I don't think I've ever eaten it knowingly, since IIRC my dad is one of the people for whom it tastes like soap and therefore he and my mom never cook with it.)

[branchandroot]

Excellent guesses, then; though, yeah, I'd go with less wine and more water if you want a nice broth. Maybe a quarter teaspoon of cumin, if you want a more savory depth.

Indeed, not everyone's tastebuds agree with cilantro! If you've had enchiladas, though, that's primarily what the sauce is flavored with, besides tomato. It's that "wait, what /is/ that?" flavoring, because Statesiders use cilantro so rarely in "American style" food.

[edenfalling]

You know, I don't think I've ever had enchiladas? I'm not even certain what they are. *googles hastily* Ah. Okay. Tortilla wrapped around whatever with chili sauce. En-chili-ada, right, makes sense.

Also, cilantro is coriander? Huh. I guess American usage generally calls the leaves cilantro and the seeds coriander? Because I'm pretty sure you can grind coriander but I was under the vague impression that cilantro was a fresh green leaf type of herb. Anyway, I certainly don't remember eating any foods that tasted of soap, let alone muddy soap, but then again, my dad and I definitely don't share all our other food sensitivities (I do not have an automatic gag reflex to nuts and pineapple, and rather enjoy capsaicin; he is not allergic to raw fruits and vegetables, and likes coconut and pears; etc.) so that doesn't actually tell me whether I've eaten cilantro or not.

I should ask the people at Viva! Taqueria if they use cilantro in any of their dishes. From their menu, I am inclined to say they don't, but I don't know any other Mexican place within reach.

[branchandroot]

*grins* Confusing plant, isn't it? The leaves are cilantro, which you can harvest as the summer goes along like any other green herb. The seeds, you have to hover over for about a week and pounce on as soon as they start to brown, before they fall and roll and bounce everywhere, and that's coriander. Which is a lovely spice, but kind of a bugger to harvest.

It's definitely a staple of mexican food, right up there with the flaming hot chilis, but looking at that place's sauces, I'm thinking not. It "should" be in the mole and enchilada sauce, definitely in the guacamole too, but since it /is/ one of those herbs that some people are sensitive to I'm not really surprised that they'd try to get around that.

If you want to check, you could get a fresh bunch from the grocery, dice it up, and sprinkle it in a tomato-cheese omelette. A small one, since you're not sure yet!