My Grandmother's Chicken Soup

I wasn't going to post back-to-back recipes but this isn't just a recipe, it's a story.

When I was a child my grandparents lived in Arizona but in the summer they would make the trek up the Alcan to Alaska. The Alcan is the Alaska-Canada highway that winds its way for four or five days, up and down through the wilderness.

The last time I traveled the road it was mostly unpaved and I remember mile after mile of hills and valleys that jarred my bones. Grandpa and Grandma drove Old Blue, their Ford sedan, all the way from Chandler to visit in the summer and once they got here they'd pack up a little trailer and head down to the Kenai to fish.

Grandpa would fish and then Grandma would smoke and can the catch and when they needed supplies or wanted to drop in to see the grandchildren they'd run up to Anchorage for a visit. And on special days--days when we were really, really lucky--Grandma would fix her famous chicken noodle soup and baking powder biscuits.

I can't smell a pot of chicken soup on the stove without thinking of Grandma and while chicken soup may not be your standard summer fare while I was sick last week it was about the only thing that sounded good to eat.

Chicken soup is chicken soup but what made Grandma's soup special--what made it the kind of soup that we'd cheer for is that she made homemade noodles. Big, fat, slurpy noodles that were hard to eat without cutting them with a knife in your bowl. Noodles that only got better the next day when you could have the leftovers with Grandma for lunch (like me, she was big on savoring the leftovers).

My recipe calls for boiling a cut-up chicken, reserving the broth, then sauteing a cup of finely diced celery, a cup of finely diced sweet onion and a cup of finely diced carrots slowly over a medium heat until things soften up. Then I add the fresh cracked pepper and a couple dashes of ground cloves. It sounds weird but the cloves really give it that wonderful aroma that tops it off.

Saute another minute or so then add the broth, shredded chicken and a couple of bay leaves. Then come the noodles.

These aren't fancy noodles, they're as homey and down-to-earth as you can get and are really more like spaetzel or dumplings but they're worth the extra ten minutes of work. You combine:

1 beaten egg
2 T milk
½ t salt
1 c flour

I mix it in the food processor so it only takes a second, you might need to adjust the milk or flour so that you get a big stretchy ball that sticks together properly.

Once you've got the ball, put it on a floured surface and roll it out. It doesn't need to be pretty but make it rather thin if you can. Then I use a pastry cutter like you see above to cut the shape in half then chop off lengths of noodles one after the other before dropping them into the boiling water. Oh, and the add the salt at the end after the noodles are cooked. I tend to forget the salt.

Give the noodles a good dose of flour too because they won't stick together and the floury noodles just add an extra creamy thickness to the soup whick makes it even better. I usually double the noodle recipe for my big pot.

So give it a try, I promise it's easy and the difference is so wonderful you'll thank me (and Grandma) for it.

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