Liquid beige

[stephbg]

To celebrate my real live cold I thought I'd make myself some chicken soup. Commercial soup (and sauce, gravy, recipe bases etc) was one of the first categories of food to be struck from the diet, so it's been a long time between slurps.

I used to make my own every now and then, but unfortunately the rules and restrictions of the beige made this a challenge I just couldn't face. No mushrooms? No onion? No corn? No bacon bones? No chili? No brocolli? No pepper? No carrots? etc etc



So what was in it? A vague collection of beige ingredients, more or less just boiled together for a while and then stick munged.

* 1 skin-free fresh organic chicken breast. So they tell me.
* 1 potato
* 1 leek
* A quantity of red lentils (n is a number)
* A handful of spring onions
* An unspecified amount of water
* Some salt here and there
* A bit of rice flour, to thicken
* A knob of butter in which to brown the chicken and leek first.

So how was it? Not spectacular, it must be said (my ideal soup features a ham hock), although it has a nice albeit subtle peppery aftertaste from the lentils. Still, it was warm and wet, and undeniably chicken soup. I'm out of fresh chives and parsley, so have only myself to blame. I'll get some to grace the next bowlful.

Comments

[krjalk.livejournal.com]

What spices are safe for you? You mention chili as verboten, how about all of the other C spices - coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom? Pepper? I am guessing that they are full of concentrated non-beige nastiness, am I right?

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

A bit of coriander is permitted. Everything else is, as you say, concentrated non-beige yumminess.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Real chicken stock would improve that immensely. Do you have a crockpot?

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I know there are restrictions about even home-made stock (no long slow cooking permitted). I'll have to hit the books for better (permitted) methods. Today was a chuck-it-in-the-pot-and-see exercise :-)

I don't think I've ever made my own chicken stock, come to think of it.

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

no long slow cooking permitted

pressure-cooker?

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Hm and bother.

Stock's easy, if you find out you can tolerate it now or later - just throw chicken scraps (carcass, skin, whatever - we just put in what's left after a roast chicken dinner) into a crockpot, add salt and whatever else you like and water to cover well, and simmer for a good long time. I usually do it overnight and a fair way into the next day for maximally delicious, gelatinous stock. You can also use whatever's cheap, like necks or wings or frames or something, if you're doing it from scratch.

The whatever else can be onions, leeks and celery tops, carrots, any other vegetable scraps (sweet potato skins often get a guernsey here), bay leaves, pepper, other herbs & spices as desired. None of it has to be finely diced or anything, just chunk it and chuck it in.

Chill, skim and freeze flat in ziplocks for convenient portions.

[delicious-irony.livejournal.com]

If spring onions and leeks are permitted, why aren't onions? Shallots? Garlic?

What about other forms of lentils? Green? Black?

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Onions and shallots are too high in salicylates. Garlic is permitted in small doses (thank the gods), but I probably have too much of it.

There's one type of lentils that are off the list but I can't remember which.

I'm a bit slow to take up new ingredients even when my options are so limited. I don't crave new flavours - I crave old ones.