Comfort foods for the plague-ridden

May 18, 2006 · Posted in Recipes · 1 Comment 

I've been at home with an unpleasant throat infection for four days. Instead of bitching about how horrible I feel, I'll share some of my favourite traditional foods (both of which usually make me feel better, and which I have recently made).

Polish broth

This is traditionally made with a mixture of beef and chicken. I made it with chicken only. It is a clear soup; at the end you will be left with some pre-cooked meat and vegetables which you can use for dumplings, pie, sandwiches, or whatever.

Vital equipment:
Big pot
Fine sieve

The broth:
At least 500g of meat on the bone (chicken and/or beef)
Carrots (3-6, depending on size)
Leeks (bunch)
Celery (one or two stalks)
Fresh parsley (bunch)
Blackened onion (see below)
Dried strongly-flavoured mushrooms (Optional. Traditionally dried porcini; you can also use shiitake, or other asian mushrooms. I once got some weird dried black mushrooms that look like lichen; I've finally found a use for them.)
Salt
Peppercorns
Bay leaves

To serve:
Egg noodles
Chopped fresh herbs (parsley, dill)

Instructions:
Rinse the meat, put it in a big pot with enough water to cover it, and put it on the stove on high. In the meantime, blacken the onion: peel it, cut the ends off, and roll it around on a skillet (no oil!), a pan you don't like very much, or just a hotplate until most of the outside is blackened.

When the meat starts to cook, greyish scum will start to form on the surface. You should skim this off with some kind of sieve or spoon and throw it away. It's not a complete disaster if you don't get all of it out; your soup will just end up a bit murky.

When you have removed as much of the scum as you can, add more water to the pot, and add the blackened onion and the remaining vegetables. Bring everything to the boil, then turn the heat down to medium. Go read a very long book.

The soup will be ready when the meat is falling off the bone.
Cook the noodles. Fish out the meat and large vegetables, and pour the rest of the soup through a sieve to remove the smaller bits.

Set aside the meat, carrots, onion and mushrooms, which you can use to make something else, and throw away the leeks, celery and parsley, which you will probably not want to eat.

Serve the soup very hot, on top of the freshly cooked noodles, sprinkled with chopped herbs.

You can freeze the broth for later use if you make too much.

Noodles with cheese

I don't know if this is in any way a traditional Polish dish (I have found dozens of Polish recipes for “noodles with cheese” and each one is for something totally different) or something someone in my family made up, but I like it. This dish is very quick to make, very cheap, suitable for vegetarians and probably not that unhealthy, apart from the fried component.

Ingredients:
Noodles
Some kind of white cheese, crumbled (chunky cottage cheese, ricotta, etc. You can even use feta, but then you should cook the noodles without additional salt)
Breadcrumbs
Butter / margarine / oil for frying the breadcrumbs

Instructions:
Cook the noodles. Mix the noodles with the crumbled cheese. Fry the breadcrumbs until brown and crunchy; pour over the noodles and cheese.

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