Country-Style Soup : Soupe Villageoise: LCB at Home : Lesson 2 : Part 2

A leek and cabbage soup; got surprising raves for such a simple little thing.

The fun was to make the stock from scratch; dead simple, as such things so often are once you have some sort of a technique to do it. It can be made well in advance (couple of days) so the assembly at the last moment is not a big sweat at all.

Purports to serve 6 - could serve 10. It's a very produce-filled bowl; lots of cabbage and leeks and only a relatively small amount of liquid. Next time I'll put in more stock to start with.

What I actually did was...

Soupe Villageoise : Country-Style Vegetable Soup with Noodles

Serves: 6

Ingredients

Stock

• 1 chicken (chop head off, separate neck and feet from body [for more compact occupancy of the stock pot])
• 3 L water [3 quarts]
  
• 2 celery stalks
• 6 springs parsley (big ones, stems and all)
• 3 carrots (generous sized)
• 2 onions (medium)
• 3 cloves (of clove)
• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 t salt
• 12 peppercorns, black

Soup

• 1/4 C butter (unsalted of course)
• 1/2 cabbage (1/2 a medium size that is)
  
• 1/4 C butter (need I repeat myself?)
• 1 kg leeks [2 #]
  
• 8 C stock
• salt
• pepper
  
• 1 C vermicelli noodles
• parsley for sprinkling

Procedure

Stock

1. Truss chicken [wrap with string]
2. Cut onions and veggies in 2 (or maybe 4) (big chunks)
3. Put chicken into a very big pot
4. Put the veggies and everything else into the pot too
5. Put a lot of water into the pot as well (see note 1)
6. Bring to a boil
7. Reduce to a simmer
8. Skim off the scum and froth and fat that rises to the top (yucky)
9. Continue simmering for an hour
   • Skim as necessary
10. Remove the chicken (save it for something; see note 2)
    • add more water now if it all didn't go in earlier
11. Simmer for another 1 1/2 hours (skimming)
12. Remove some of the large chunks of veggies with a slotted spoon (prevents splashing in the following step)
13. Strain (best would be a fine strainer but I didn't have one)
14. Cool, uncovered, the resultant, golden, stock as quickly as possible (see note 3)

Soup

1. Big pot of water on the boil (for the cabbage)
2. Remove out cabbage leaves, remove hard center, quarter it, rinse it, drain, julienne (slice in fine strips [little-finger wide])
3. Blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, drain
4. Butter into a large pan, low
5. Cabbage into the pan, coat with butter
6. Cook, covered, until soft (but not colored - thus the low heat)
   • stir once in a while
7. Leeks, use the white and first third of the green
8. Clean leeks (the usual way [see notes]), slice thin (thinner than the cabbage)
9. Butter into a pan (for leeks), low heat
10. Leeks go in, coat, cover, cook - until soft (& not colored)
    • stir once in a while
11. Then, leeks, cabbage and stock into a big soup pot, high heat
12. Boil, reduce to simmer
    • 40 minutes will do it
13. Season (salt and pepper) (use enough salt this time, please - and a touch more pepper - don't be afraid)
14. When ready to serve
    1. add the vermicelli,
    2. get it all boiling,
    3. simmer 5 minutes ('til vermicelli is done)

Done

Notes

1. If there's not enough space for all the water at once put in as much as possible and add the rest later when the stock has boiled down and you pull the chicken out
2. I made croquettes
3. To cool quickly plug sink, put pot in sink, surround with ice cubes from your refrigerator ice machine
4. Cleaning leeks:
1. Remove the ugly bottom root, and much of the useless green
2. quarter the thing vertically from 1" [2 cm] from the bottom to the top (it'll look like a feather duster if you use your imagination)
3. rinse under running water, hanging upside down (the leek, not you) to get out the inevitable dirt from between the leaves

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