Italian Wedding Soup

My sister told me about this recipe - she saw it made on a Food Network show and copied from what they did. I made it this week, and it was easy to do and turns out really well. I had some chicken stock on hand, so I added that to the water I boiled the chicken in, because I just boiled one bone-in, skin-on breast, rather than a whole bird, since it's just me and I try not to eat a lot of meat. I also added some fresh tarragon that I had left over from something else, since fresh herbs are expensive and I don't like them to go to waste. It's great soup, and perfect since winter won't seem to move on!

Ingredients:

Whole chicken or game hen

Large head of escarole (or spinach - what I used because I couldn't find escarole)

Two yellow onions

Celery

Carrots

Garlic

Oregano

Bay leaves

Orzo (or very small pasta, like pastina)

Salt

Ground beef or turkey

2 eggs

Bread

Milk

Boil a whole chicken (for one person, I would get either some chicken on the bone or a small game hen or chicken piece(s)). Add to the water chopped carrot, celery and onion and some oregano, a bay leaf and some salt. Let the chicken boil down for about an hour. After an hour, remove the chicken to a plate to cool.

While the chicken is boiling, make your tiny meatballs (you can use ground turkey. I saute some onion, garlic and celery to add to mine along with a piece of bread soaked in milk and one or two eggs, two if you’re using turkey, salt and pepper. You can substitute breadcrumbs for the bread.) The meatballs should be small. Bake them for about ½ an hour to 40 minutes.

Tear the meat off the chicken, shredding it, and add back to the soup base.

Chop the head of escarole and add to soup

Add meatballs

Add orzo

Cook until the orzo is tender and voila! Italian wedding soup.

Chocolate Chip Cookie #10

Some of you may know that I've been having a couple crises over the last few years. One is my pie crust crisis. Ever since I've graduated from college, I just can't pull together a good pie crust, and the more I try (fancy recipes, ice water, using shortening AND butter) the worst they get. But that's a battle to fight another day, because yesterday I got a different monkey off my back: the chocolate chip cookie. My cookies have been turning into flat, anemic-looking rubber disks that burnt on the edges, stayed raw in the middle, and glommed together in the cookie jar so badly they turned into a chocolate chip mass. No longer, my friends! These cookies remained discreet, each one delicious and distinguishable from the next. This picture is of my actual cookies. And, they were pretty darn tasty, too. Huzzah!

In celebration of this achievement, I'm going to actually TYPE UP a long recipe from a cookbook. Normally, I'll do a search on the Google for a recipe from a cookbook, and if I can't find it, I don't post it. (sorry!) But this is a remarkable day. Enjoy. It's from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food, which I like, among many other reasons, because it includes the weight and volume of the ingredients.

Dry Ingredients:
10 3/4 oz or 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:
5 1/3 oz or 3/4 cup sugar
5 oz or 3/4 cup brown sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter* melted and slightly cooled
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Other: 2 cups chocolate chips

Combine the dry ingredients well (Alton recommends using a food processor. I used a whisk). In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and the sugar well, until you can't see the individual sugar particles but you can still feel them, and the butter has lightened in color and doubled in volume. Add the egg yolks one at a time, then the vanilla. Then gradually add the dry goods, mix just until combined, then fold in the chips.

Using a 1-ounce disher**, scoop 24 portions onto two ungreased baking sheets. At this stage, the cookies can be frozen on the pans then moved to zip-top bags, they'll keep for 3 months.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, or until golden brown (I rotated the pans halfway through, both between the two racks and I rotated each pan so the back was put to the front). Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

RESULTS: Well, you already know how I feel about these cookies. They weren't the best fresh, though, they had some crumbly grandularness to them, which evened out after resting overnight in the cookie jar. They had some good butteriness and also just enough saltiness. I will never make another chocolate chip cookie recipe. This is it, love at first sight.

*I was running out of butter, and I had a stick of margarine left over from before I swore off margarine, so I used one stick of margarine and one stick butter. I'm not sure how that affected the results, we'll have to see the next time I make them. Also, the butter, though almost soft, wasn't QUITE soft. Again, I don't know how that affected the results.

**I didn't have a 1-oz scooper, but I didn't really need it. The batter was more of a paste, and it was pretty easy to just split it in half, put half on each cookie sheet, then continue halving and, uh, thirding(?) until I had 12 equal portions on each sheet.