Soup, Beautiful Soup and Other Cooking As Well.

 Wednesday we drove home from Bingo and then the real work began.

I would like you to meet my soup-pot. It holds twenty six quarts.

My shiny pot was a replacement for a pot very much like this one.

My father purchased a sixteen quart pot very similar to this black graniteware pot at Raymond's in Quincy.

I have vague memories of being with my father when he purchased the pot.

My father began using the pot to make chicken soup for Pesach in the early 1960s until his death. I inherited the pot after he died.

Two years ago after straining the last of the Passover chicken soup I noticed that the enamel had worn away at the bottom of the pot. it was time to get a new passover soup pot. I recall that I ordered the new pot before Passover ended and it arrived while we were still in passover mode. I just looked for big pot...and I ended up getting a pot that was 26 quarts instead of the more manageable 16 quarts. 

Please forgive that digression, ( if you are from Boston that digression will probably open up a floodgate of memories), but once we got home from Bingo it was time to make the soup. I loaded the chicken frames that I had purchased--just under 20 lbs into the bottom of the pot. 

As I was loading the packages of chicken bones into my shopping cart a lovely woman in a black wig and I began chatting about our soup making. She asked me if I used net bags in my soup making. I had no idea what she was talking about.

She then explained that one could purchase net bags to contain the soup ingredients and that they make straining the soup much easier. She told me that the bags were in a asile in the center of the store. I thanked her and continued shopping

A while later my chicken bone buddy called out to my husband. I went over to my chicken bone friend and she handed me a bag of the net bags.

I thanked my new friend profusely. She asked that I send b'rachot/ blessings her way as I made use of the bags.

This is what the bags themselves look like.

The bones were too big for the bags but I put each vegetable variety into its own bag, (well except for the onions)

I then simmered the soup from Wednesday evening until Friday. I know that most soup makers would just take the net contained vegetables and toss them. This is not how I was taught to make chicken soup.

The David Jacobs method has one squeeze every drop of liquid out of the soup solids and then add that extruded goodness back into the soup. It is back breaking work to squeeze a tea towel filled with hot cooked root vegetables.

The net bags cut that labor by a huge amount because I could use a potato masher to do most of the liquid extruding.

Celery root or turnip pre mashing.

Carrots midmashing and juice extraction.

The job of straining the soup, though still large, was much easier because of the net bags. Yes, I sent many lovely thoughts of blessing to my friend at Bingo throughout the entire process. I didn't take photos of all of my lovely soup all strained and clear and in containers. I will tell you that I ended up with 496 oz of beautiful soup, that's 15.5 quarts.

This is the brisket that I purchased. The clementine is for scale.

Kosher meat is expensive. One of the butchers in my neighborhood is selling brisket for more than $30/lb. Buying the brisket for 6.99 / lb feels like I have gotten away with something.

I trimmed the fat off of the brisket. put it into a net bag and then put the fat on top of the meat as it cooked.

Here is the brisket all cooked and sliced. I think that I made a sweet and sour marinade for it. Too much cooking has taken place since then for me to remember exactly how I flavored the brisket.

I made a no-nut charoset for the nut allergic who will be joining us at seder.

I also made a with-nuts charoset for the rest of us.

I cooked two chickens for next Friday night with fennel, celery clementines and black pepper. There are no photos of the meatballs that we ate for Shabbat dinner. Most of them are packed away in the freezer.

I neglected to take an after photo. I promise that the chickens are golden brown. They are now packed away in the freezer.

Last night I kashered all of the silver cups that we would be using for Seder as well as the silver serving pieces. Kashering is ritual cleaning--which for metal means a dunk in rapidly boiling water.

The hard part of kashering is pulling the boiling hot bits of metal out of a big pot of rapidly boiling water. I came up with a genius solution last night.

Inspired by the soup nets, I filled a net bag that I use for laundry with the various silver things that needed to be kashered.

I held the bag by the string, lowered the bag into the water, pulled it out and then shook most of the collected water back into the pot. It isn't a difficult job, but the net bag made it a whole lot easier.

After my adventure in soup making I threw away all of the squeezed out vegetable pulp. I also squeezed  out all of the chicken bones. After cooking for a couple of days the bones are close to dissolving. I had rescued all of the actual bits of chicken meat.and saved it in the fridge for later meals.

The meat from the soup is a little bleak on its own. It has the texture of pencil shavings and about as  much flavor. Another year I hacked chicken filled potato knishes that my family actually enjoyed eating.

I looked at some of my old cookbooks for knish recipes. Most of the during the year ones are made with a yeast shell. There are Passover knish recipes that used mashed potatoes for the shell.  I made mashed potatoes and added lots of fat in the form of coconut oil, some matza meal,  some of the chicken soup, extra potato starch and spices and four eggs. 

I lay out the mashed potato in long rows and then used a spoon to create a deep channel that I filled with some of the soup chicken, some chicken soup ( left over from Shabbat dinner)  shredded celery, fennel and carrot. I cooked the mixture with some potato starch and a bit of the mashed potato so if wouldn't be too wet for a few minutes in the microwave before spooning the filling into the potato channels.  I used a spatula and my hands to close the chicken mixture filled channel. I brushed the top of the long potato logs with a bit of olive oil to promote browning and then baked. I scored the logs into serving sized sliced before baking.

Forgive me for not taking photos of the process of the actual knish making..

I ate the little single knish and it was really good.

I still had a bunch of the shredded chicken mixture left so I also made a layered chicken and mashed potato dish. I played with the flavor of the chicken and vegetable mixture.

It still needs another minute or two of cooking but I assume that we will be eating it over the next few days.

Today is thirty nine years

since...

We are still having fun. The actual celebrating will have to be put off for a little while. We did walk through the street fair that was taking place right downstairs. I bought a roasted ear of corn lots lots of cayenne and not quite enough lemon. it was delicious.