Monday, May 23, 2011

Chicken Soup and Chimichurri Sauce

If it's Monday in my house it means that we are having soup for dinner.  You can turn a very simple Chicken Soup into something very different by serving it up with a sauce on the side. Tonight that sauce is a Chimichurri Sauce.
When ever I make Chicken soup I use a whole chicken in the pot, covered with water and seasoned with salt and pepper and a bay leaf. I add celery, onion and carrots to the pot and let the chicken gently simmer until the chicken is done.  From this simple stock you can go in many directions just by adding some additional ingredients. Add some ginger, garlic, green onions and some sherry and you have the wonderful beginning of a broth for Wonton Soup. Add some egg yolks and lemon juice and you're absolutely going to love the flavors that develop into an Avgolemono Soup. Feel like something Mexican? Try adding some cilantro, chopped green peppers and scallions to your stock and you're on your way to making a delicious Chicken Tortilla soup. You'll be amazed at all the delicious stocks that you can make.

The stock is delicious, and my family loves the stock with the vegetables cut up and cooked with a small shaped pasta, such as Ditalini.  The problem I have is getting anyone to eat the plain, boiled chicken. It's funny how history repeats itself. When my mother would make boiled chicken we wouldn't eat it either, until she made this fabulous sauce to accompany the boiled chicken. We didn't know that we were eating Chimichurri Sauce. She just called it a Green Sauce or Salsa Verde!  There are so many sauces that my mom used to make that we now know have culinary names.  I'll be sharing some of these sauces as I go along and who knows, I may even learn the proper culinary names for the sauces, instead of calling them brown sauce and green sauce! Are you along for the crawl?

Chimichurri
One bunch of fresh parsley chopped fine
3 - 4 cloves of fresh garlic, chopped fine
a pinch of oregano
a pinch of salt and pepper
a pinch of red pepper flakes
3 - 4 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Chop everything and mix it all together in a bowl adding olive oil.
I took the chicken off the bone, the dark meat went into the soup pot and the white meat was arranged on a platter and topped with the Chimichurri Sauce.
and for those who love Balsamic....
drizzled with some glaze
What can be better than a nourishing cup of soup with a delicious chicken chimichurri?
Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

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