Hey, Julia, whazzup chickie? Chicken

Take a look at Julia's recipe and then if you feel daunted, simple it up a bit this way...

Ingredients

One smallish chicken
One lemon
2 tablespoons oil or butter
2 tablespoons thyme
salt and pepper


Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees (F). 

Zest one lemon. Add lemon zest, lemon juice, thyme and oil to a small bowl and mix well.

Wash and dry the chicken inside and out, make sure you remove the neck and other innerds. Place in a pan set up so you can collect the drippings. Stuff with lemon halves or quarters.

Brush the chicken with the oil mixture, sprinkle with salt and pepper to your taste.

Cook chicken for 20 minutes on 450, baste or not as you have time. At 20 minutes, lower your temperature to 375 degrees (F) and continue roasting for about an hour. Or until a meat thermometer in the meatiest part of the chicken reads 180 degrees (F).

Pour the drippings into a jar and keep in the fridge until you're ready to make soup.


Eat the chicken until you're bored with it.Then turn it into soup.

Lemon Moon Chicken Soup

This soup owes everything to Julia Child and my sister-in-law... the other one.

You can start anywhere you want, but I started with the raw chicken and a handful of herbs. We made the simple version of Julia Child's Roast Lemon and Thyme Chicken and ate the chicken until we were bored with it.

Ingredients

Roast chicken, as much as you have left + whatever drippings you have.

Handful of fresh thyme, rosemary, basil or several tablespoons of the same, dried. 3 - 4 Bay leaves all in a little cheesecloth bag.

Juice of one lemon, plus lemon zest if you want to go there.
15 - 20 Peppercorns, crushed, or two tablespoons of ground pepper
2 - 3 tablespoons salt
2- 3 slices of ginger
Chopped onion, carrots, celery. A cup or three of each.
Chopped kale and/or collards. Several leaves of each.

Directions

In a soup pot, your chicken carcass*, the reserved drippings from when you made roasted chicken, lemon juice from a whole lemon, herbs, zest, ginger, salt and pepper. Then all veggies. Cover with water and simmer.

If you boil this, your soup will be cloudy. No boil equals clear broth. It really doesn't matter because it'll taste just as good either way.

Simmer at least an hour. You can simmer as long as you like, so figure your schedule. Once you're ready, turn the heat off and remove the chicken from the pot. Reserve the liquid.

Let the chicken cool and commence a-picking. Pick all the meat off the bones, white and dark. Pinch or cut into bite-sized pieces and toss back into the pot.

Be nice and make sure the dog and cat get a small piece each (NO BONES!) 

Test your broth for saltiness, if it's a bit bland, add salt until it's savory. You can also add more pepper and/or ginger at this step. When you taste for salt, also check to see how lemony the broth tastes. Add more if you feel like it needs it.

Take out the bouquet garni and it's essentially ready to eat at this point.


Martha Stewart says you can make a richer broth by "two large egg yolks and the juice of one lemon" just before you serve it.

This is a nice basic soup, you can add noodles, potato, sweet potato, squash or rice or beans, or anything really. Experiment!

As a tip, if your soup is too salty, add a potato, quartered. It'll take up a lot of the salt and mellow things out.



*Some relatives may be squeamish about "chicken carcass" as a cooking term, use "leftovers" instead.  Unless they're vegan or vegetarian.  In these cases, be nice and let them know what's in the soup.