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Hornet vi løfter, nu er det fest
Tonight's first-run attempt at avgolemono soup: a triumphant success.
No Toaster Ovens Involved in This Recipe Unless You Count the Optional Pita Avgolemono Soup
Preparation:
Look out the window at the intermittent flurries of snow and the sudden winter sunset flaming between the roofs in bands of crystalline blue and hot gold and forge-rose between the grey masses of cloud. Halloween really took the day of the dead, when the year too dies seriously this year. Decide soup would be a really good idea. Remember you bought two loukaniko the previous afternoon.
Avgolemono:
8 cups chicken stock
4 eggs
3 lemons
1 cuprice orzo
salt and black pepper to taste
In a soup pot larger than at first you think you'll need, bring chicken stock to a boil over high heat. Stir in one cup of orzo, because although the recipe which inspired tonight's meal calls for rice, and rice is what you remember eating every time you've ordered avgolemono in a restaurant, you and your husband are very hungry and cooking with pasta reduces the soup-making time by a third. While the orzo is cooking—it will take about ten minutes—whisk together the eggs and lemon juice in a glass bowl slightly smaller than ideal, as you will find out when you try to froth the mixture. Change the whisk for a fork and keep frothing. When the orzo is tender and cooked through, carefully ladle one cup of stock into the egg-and-lemon mixture and whisk until fully combined and frothy. Pour back into pot, keep whisking, and simmer an additional couple of minutes while you find the salt and the black pepper. Season to taste.
Using potholders, transfer soup pot to trivet on dining room table and return to kitchen to bring out the loukaniko that have been broiling on both sides in the oven since right after the orzo went into the stock. Put your husband in charge of retrieving the two pita that have been warming in the toaster oven since the addition of the whisked eggs and lemon juice. You were a little skeptical about storebought tzatziki and hummus—you'd intended to make the former from scratch and then suddenly the alternative appearing in a cooler of condiments just seemed like a better idea—but they are delicious and the Kalamata olive hummus is especially impressive. Eat a lot of incredibly tasty food. Make mental note to find out what goes into loukaniko beyond pork and lamb, because it is intensely spiced and deeply savory. Store remaining half of avgolemono in refrigerator. Be just as glad you hadn't settled on any plans for dessert.
Next time we will make the avgolemono with chicken stock we've made ourselves: we didn't have eight cups in the freezer, so I bought some organic chicken stock while picking up the lemons and orzo and it was perfectly serviceable, but this is very clearly a recipe whose quality partly depends on the starting stock and I know our own chicken broth is more flavorful. (Roast chicken carcass plus soup vegetables—carrots, shallots, celery. Come on.) We will also take the time for the cup of rice, because we suspect it will thicken the soup differently. If we make it with orzo again, we might use another egg. Nonetheless, tonight's results were sturdy, silky, sharply lemony without being too bright or too harsh, and seriously full of protein. Would eat again. Good thing, too, because we have lots of it left over.
P.S. I finished this post and checked my e-mail. My poem "Aetiologies" has been accepted by Mythic Delirium. This is the poem I wrote last October after the death of Dr. Fiveash, my well-loved Latin teacher. I performed it at his memorial in January; I am very, very glad it will have a home now. When it's published, I will have to let his family know.
No Toaster Ovens Involved in This Recipe Unless You Count the Optional Pita Avgolemono Soup
Preparation:
Look out the window at the intermittent flurries of snow and the sudden winter sunset flaming between the roofs in bands of crystalline blue and hot gold and forge-rose between the grey masses of cloud. Halloween really took the day of the dead, when the year too dies seriously this year. Decide soup would be a really good idea. Remember you bought two loukaniko the previous afternoon.
Avgolemono:
8 cups chicken stock
4 eggs
3 lemons
1 cup
salt and black pepper to taste
In a soup pot larger than at first you think you'll need, bring chicken stock to a boil over high heat. Stir in one cup of orzo, because although the recipe which inspired tonight's meal calls for rice, and rice is what you remember eating every time you've ordered avgolemono in a restaurant, you and your husband are very hungry and cooking with pasta reduces the soup-making time by a third. While the orzo is cooking—it will take about ten minutes—whisk together the eggs and lemon juice in a glass bowl slightly smaller than ideal, as you will find out when you try to froth the mixture. Change the whisk for a fork and keep frothing. When the orzo is tender and cooked through, carefully ladle one cup of stock into the egg-and-lemon mixture and whisk until fully combined and frothy. Pour back into pot, keep whisking, and simmer an additional couple of minutes while you find the salt and the black pepper. Season to taste.
Using potholders, transfer soup pot to trivet on dining room table and return to kitchen to bring out the loukaniko that have been broiling on both sides in the oven since right after the orzo went into the stock. Put your husband in charge of retrieving the two pita that have been warming in the toaster oven since the addition of the whisked eggs and lemon juice. You were a little skeptical about storebought tzatziki and hummus—you'd intended to make the former from scratch and then suddenly the alternative appearing in a cooler of condiments just seemed like a better idea—but they are delicious and the Kalamata olive hummus is especially impressive. Eat a lot of incredibly tasty food. Make mental note to find out what goes into loukaniko beyond pork and lamb, because it is intensely spiced and deeply savory. Store remaining half of avgolemono in refrigerator. Be just as glad you hadn't settled on any plans for dessert.
Next time we will make the avgolemono with chicken stock we've made ourselves: we didn't have eight cups in the freezer, so I bought some organic chicken stock while picking up the lemons and orzo and it was perfectly serviceable, but this is very clearly a recipe whose quality partly depends on the starting stock and I know our own chicken broth is more flavorful. (Roast chicken carcass plus soup vegetables—carrots, shallots, celery. Come on.) We will also take the time for the cup of rice, because we suspect it will thicken the soup differently. If we make it with orzo again, we might use another egg. Nonetheless, tonight's results were sturdy, silky, sharply lemony without being too bright or too harsh, and seriously full of protein. Would eat again. Good thing, too, because we have lots of it left over.
P.S. I finished this post and checked my e-mail. My poem "Aetiologies" has been accepted by Mythic Delirium. This is the poem I wrote last October after the death of Dr. Fiveash, my well-loved Latin teacher. I performed it at his memorial in January; I am very, very glad it will have a home now. When it's published, I will have to let his family know.
no subject
Also, this reminded me rather distinctly of
no subject
Highly recommended!
Also, this reminded me rather distinctly of derspatchel's recipe for hot buttered rum.
You may enjoy the recipes for bread pudding and corn pudding, then. (Oh, and coconut chipotle sweet potato, which I hadn't realized was such a proto-version of the style. I thought I'd invented it with the bread pudding.) I am capable of writing out recipes that aren't second-person short stories—this is a relatively straightforward example—but I seem to find the other way a lot more entertaining.