Chicken Avgolemono Soup

This is a variation on the soup we had at Cooking club on Monday. Well, considering that Monday's soup was made with chicken wings and a special stock, plus basmati rice plus cornflour, I guess it's more based on that soup than a variation.

First I used chicken stock I had ready-made in the fridge. Every time I roast a chicken, and we've been having a lot of those lately, I throw the bones into a slow cooker with whatever vegetable ends I have, like carrot tops and bits of onion, and simmer it overnight. Then I strain out all the bits and reduce the stock to about 1/3 of the original volume. Then I cool it before pouring it into ice cubes and freezing it. In this particular case I had about two cups of jellied stock int the fridge that I hadn't yet made cubes with.

I had a couple of roast chicken carcasses, so I picked all the good meat off those. I would guess it came to slightly over a cup. More would probably have been better. I chopped that finely, added it to the stock and heated it up to boiling point.

Then I squeezed out half a lemon, added that to an egg yolk, and beat the two until foamy. I think 2 egg yolks would have been better, given that I didn't use rice or cornflour as an added thickener. I took some of the hot chicken with stock, about half a cup, and added it to the egg mixture. I did that twice more before pouring all the egg mixture back into the stock. I stirred and stirred while it reheated over gentle heat and thickened, avoiding boiling. And then I served it up with some flat-leaf parsley for garnish.

That's one way of doing it. You could make it from scratch by using a whole chicken leg, thigh and drumstick, with a medium carrot, small leek, small celery stick, 2 or 3 parsley stems, a small onion, a bay leaf, a couple of crushed peppercorns and about a teaspoon of salt. Cover that generously with water, bring it to the boil, then let it simmer for around an hour and a half to absorb all the flavour. Strain and measure the amount of stock you have. Reduce to about three cups, or add water to make it up to three. Remove the chicken from the bones, discarding the skin, chop it finely and add it to the strained stock. Reheat, then do the bit with the 1/2 lemon and 2 egg yolks.

The lemon gives it a nice freshness of flavour.