Sunday Suppers: Homemade Veggie Broth to Chicken Noodle Soup

A recent gift of homemade chicken broth got me thinking about how to make my own stock at home. I go through so much stock nowadays because of all these high-falutin' recipes that it is becoming rediculous to spend that much money on a can/box of stock. I thought the easist broth to make would probably be vegetable, plus it would clean out all those random veggies that were racing sneaking towards going bad. There, how's is that for being green and not wasting money?

I found a simple recipe that basically says take any aeromatic veggie, chop into 1 inch chunks, and boil with some spices for about 30 minutes. They listed a variety of vegetables you could include, but here is how I rolled:

4-5 ribbs of celery with some leaves
1 large onion
3 large carrots
5-6 cloves of minced garlic
Hefty sprinkle of thyme and parsley
2 bay leaves
a good pinch of salt

Nom

Some other veggies you may consider including: Green onions, mushrooms, potato peels (washed of course), bell peppers, chard, pea pods, basil, fennel, eggplant, corn cobs, asparagus butts, you name it.

First thing you got to do, aside from cutting your washed veg into 1" chunks, is throw about a tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom of  a soup pot and heat to high. Then, throw in your 1" chopped veggies. Enjoy how aeromatic your house is about to smell. I seriously dragged Jon off the couch while he was The Sweet 16 to come and smell. I was in foodie heaven. If Julia Child's house had a smell, it probably smelled like this...and butter.

Moving on.

Let your veg weep (let go of water) for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir frequently lest you have a charred flavor to your broth. Add 2 quarts of water and then BTB-RTS as Chef Anne would say. (Bring To Boil - Reduce To Simmer). Simmer for 30 minutes uncovered. This is how it will start to look

Om Nom

The next step is to seive out the solids and take only the liquid bits.

"taking the liquid bits"

Then, you are left with all the veggie mush. The broth recipe said to discard the remaining veg stuff. I thought that was a lot of hooha. What a waste. I sat around and thought about what I could do with all that awesome veg, and EUREKA! I got an idea. All of that stuff goes into a chicken noodle soup, so that is what I made. Saved time and money.

Because we aren't big chunks of veggie eaters, I took about 3/4 of veggies and pulverized them in a food processor. That gave me a nice thick puree that fattened up the broth a little. I added some more water and some chopped up chicken breasts. Again, BTBRTS for about 30 minutes. Season to taste.

About 10 minutes before you are ready to serve, add some noodles. I, unfortuantely, added the noodles like 45 minutes ahead and they got a bit mushy. My bad, I was waiting on a loaf of bread to bake. Oh well, lesson learned. Not bad for a first try though.

Chicken Mush-Noodle Soup

A Solid "B" Effort

The bread machine kolaches weren't a total bust. They really didn't move at the office. I blame three birthday parties that produced enough store bought confections to make people bypass on anything homemade. I was forced to bring about a dozen back home.

Taste: They were a little yeastie. They have an internal texture that is close to right but they aren't as sweet as they are suppoed to be either.

Jon agreed to try one when he gets home. We will see if he yacks all over the place.

Missed Steps and Other Disasters

You know you have read a new recipe like 9 million times to make sure that you didn't miss anything? Well, I did just that and I still missed something. Apparently, you are supposed to let kolaches rise again after you fill them. Missed that step somewhere.

Although they came out looking pretty...sort of...they don't have the right texture. The right texture is soft, spongy, almost a bready cake. Sadly, they didn't come out like that. These kind of have a shell, like a yeast roll, with a bread middle. Thank God these were bound for the office in the first place so Jon won't have to endure another disappointment.

Maybe I'll return the machine after the weekend and get one more try in...

Czech Recipe #1...wins and losses

Jon was right. I was disappointed, but that is jumping ahead a little.

Recipe #1: "Kolaches"
c/o Helen Horak Nemec near Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Recipe yields 6 dozen. (Really? I mean who needs 6 dozen in one sitting?)

This recipe sounded as unassuming as every other recipe in the book, so why not give it a shot? I was able to make 3 pans worth: two large jelly roll pans, and square cake pan. My logic was that the kolaches would be forced to rise up the sides of the pan and up against each other. (This is a rule my grandfather had taught me in order to make good, puffy biscuits.)

Results: Minor success. The kolaches in the square pan did fluff up some. (Not the 2 inches they are supposed to be, but a modest 1/2 an inch.) Thankfully, they were not pancakes or bricks.

I hung my head in shame and took them to the office the next day. My poor co-workers.
Thanks for nothing Helen Horak Nemec near Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Digression

I've missed a kolache debacle or two as my brain is getting clouded from the countless bags of flour I have wasted.

Let's talk a little about fillings. The traditional fillings of a Czech kolache are prunes, poppy seeds, and cottage cheese. Being that none of those sounded appetizing, I usually go with apple, cherry, strawberry and the like. Jon loves poppy seed. He would eat a dozen poppy seed kolaches if he could.

So during this attempt, I scrounged up a poppy seed filling recipe via my little Czech Cookbook. Let me just say, the directions in this book are not the clearest. Basically you add milk, sugar and 1/4 cup of poppy seeds to a skillet and cook for X amount of time. Well, I cooked for that X amount of time and had poppy seed milk.

I kept cooking until it became a black milk. "Maybe I am not cooking this hot enough," I think to myself. So I crank up the heat.

After 30 minutes, I still have this slushy concoction in the skillet. I don't know why it won't thicken. I get the mess to a boil, simmering it down to something like a consistency of cold bacon grease. I shovel it into the kolaches and bake.

Result: Nastiness!!!! Jon was kind enough to eat one and spare my feelings. The others he begrudgingly took to his office. Poor fellow.

Third Attempt: Why fat and processed flour matter

During the third attempt, I had ditched my last recipe and written down one I had located elsewhere on the Internet. Much to my frustration, Jon's mother was not too helpful with advice. It was like she was hiding the family recipe from me so her boy would dump me. "Oh dear," she chortled, "you don't make kolaches off of recipes. You have to learn in person." Oh screw it.

At this time, I was in the middle of health food kick. All organic, hormone-free, cage-free goodness was only what was good for me. I had on hand some whole wheat flour full of fibery goodness. Low fat milk and margarine to boot. What could possibly go wrong! I would just lose a bunch of calories and add to the overall health of the beloved treat.

Ummm yea right.

So I gruel over stiff batter beaten by hand with a wooden spoon. I lovingly pour my $10 bag of organic wheat flour into my low fat, scalded, organic (read $5 a gallon) milk. Then, I mix in the tub of margarine as a substitute for the 300 sticks of butter the recipes seem to require.

At this time, Jon steps in and says "smells good in here". Turns out, the dough was actually starting to smell like it was supposed to. I do a mini-victory dance, known in this household as the "smarty-pants dance".

I get all proud and teary-eyed over my whole wheat, kolache-smell-alike dough and begin to cut it into the "walnut size" balls every recipe calls for. Now, to let them rise for the 14th time... I wait.

I wait some more....

I turn on all the lights in the kitchen to warm it up.....

I turn on the stove to heat it up some more....

*Tragedy strikes*

The balls kind of spread out instead of fluffing up.

At this point, the dough balls had been "rising" for hours. I finally said, "The hell with it!" and popped them in the oven.

Well, turns out that butter fat and processed flour has a place in pastry baking. At least in kolache recipes.

These kolaches were gooey (again) and tasted like stale, wheat bread that has been sitting in your grandmother's pantry since WWII. All four dozen kolaches in this batch were AWFUL.

So, I did what every corn-fed American white-girl does when they have food they need to get out of their house in a hurry: I took them to the office. ALL my baking disasters have been pawned off on my co-workers.


People in office settings will eat anything as long as it does not try to pass as healthy. It must have something to do with cubicles, florescent lighting, and corporate servitude.

Usually, things are snatched up in minutes. Not today. I had to spend hours guilt-tripping people to eating the kolaches I brought. I took my pans home later that day, hanging my head in shame.

I cried and boo hoo-ed like a small child when I got home. I think I seriously weeped into my flour pail. Jon came home to find me curled up on the kitchen floor.

"You'll never marry me," I waled at him.

He sits down next to me and tries to be comforting: "Don't worry babe, most of the people except my grandma can not make kolaches too well. You have to be like... a grandma to do it right."

At the rate I am going, I just might die an old maid before I get this right.