Mulligatawny Stew

Mulligatawny: noun: Translated literally from Tamil, “Mulligatawny” or “Milagu thanni” means “pepper water” (“Millagu” means pepper and “thanni” means water).  All those English living in India Anglicized this soup.  And, I have to say, I love it.  Thank you East India Company, I wish you hadn’t subjugated a nation, but this soup is really really good.  Stop if you don’t like curry in any form.  But, if you like it in some forms, and you are looking for some soup to warm you up from the inside, this may be the soup for you.

I use Sambhar Curry Powder from WholeFoods.  But, use your favorite Indian type curry.  I just seem to like the warmth and flavors of the WholeFoods version.

Mulligatawny Soup

ingredients:
6.5 oz Chopped Yellow Onions
7 oz Chopped Celery
10 oz Chopped Carrots
2.5 oz Salted Butter
10 cups Chicken Stock   (if making soup stock from scratch, cream the soup stock with all the veggies, it’s great with the extra flavor and thickness)
2 large apples peeled, cored, and chopped
*Traditionally people use rice as a filler and would add about 2 cups of rice here to the soup.  If you use rice add another cup or 2 of stock to soup.  I cook Quinoa seperately and just add it to the bowl and fill with soup.  The Quinoa doesn’t get over cooked that way.
2 lbs cooked chicken – cubed (I used the chicken from making the soup stock, usually chicken thighs about 3 lbs with bones and skin.  Then let them cool, debone, remove skin, and cube chicken.)
1 pint Heavy Cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1 TBS Thyme
2 TBS Curry

directions

1. Sauté onions, carrots, & celery in butter.
2. Add curry. Cook about 5 more minutes.
3. Add chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Turn down and simmer for 1/2 an hour.
4. Add apples, chicken cubes.  Add salt, pepper, and thyme to taste. Add more curry to taste. Simmer  until you are ready to serve.
5. Make Quinoa 1.5 cups Quinoa to 3 cups chicken stock.  Bring to a boil, stirring Quinoa, then simmer for 12 minutes.
6. Add cream to soup before serving.  Ladle into bowls over cooked Quinoa.

easily serves 12, tastes even better the next day after the flavors meld and evolve.

 

Chicken Stock

Chicken Stock is the base for almost every soup I make.  I will sometime use chicken stock from the store, but it is really easy and tasty to make a very flavorful chicken soup base.

Chicken Stock

Ingredients:
5 pound chicken – I tend to use the chicken that I will use in a soup, so thighs work great
Big swirl of Olive oil
14 oz carrots
14 oz celery
8 cups water
5 cloves garlic
1 TBS Thyme
1 TBS Oregano
Salt and Pepper to taste

optional:
1 TBS Hot Hungarian Paprika
Ginger to taste

Directions:
Place Chicken and a big swirl of Olive oil in a pot, salt and pepper chicken and start browning.  I leave the skin on the thighs, I want the fat and skin browned for flavor.  Brown/cook chicken for about 15-20 minutes, the chicken will release liquid because I am not searing it, I am just cooking it and browning it a little.  Add carrots, celery, onions, and garlic.  Mix together and let cook a little longer, about 20-25 minutes at this point.  Then add 8 cups of water and the thyme, paprika, and oregano.  Cook for 2 hours on med to low.  As in all my recipes I recommend tasting and adjusting as you need.  I don’t know if my oregano is fresher, older, stronger, or weaker, than yours, so taste things along the way and adjust as needed.  You have permission to experiment, in fact it’s a requirement!
If you want clear stock, remove all the veggies, bay leaf, and chicken.  Continue to cook down, to intensify the flavor.  You want to be left with about 8 cups of clear stock.  It’s sort of funny, you start out with 8 cups water, but with all the ingredients you end up with about the same and all the flavor or the carrots, celery, spices and chicken left in that water.  Even with some cooking down, I seem to be at 8 cups.  Which for me is perfect, because that’s about how much stock I need for most of my soup recipes.

My favorite adaptation to this recipe:  Remove only the chicken, pull out the bay leaf, and then immersion blend all the veggies into the soup base.  This is great if you’re making a creamed soup or stockier/heavier soup.

Save Chicken, debone, and use in recipes as desired.