A Crash Course in Prague
Chicken Soup Sunday
Today was relatively productive...
I didn’t get up as early as I would have liked... But seriously now, who says, “no” to extra sleep?
After having a sandwich for breakfast, I worked on some homework... Again, I’ll spare everyone the details...
I headed out to the store around 2ish. I had a mission for today: make chicken soup. Mom’s recipe, for those interested:
1 Whole Chicken
6-8 Peppercorns
1-2 Bay Leaves
1 Whole White Onion
Celery
Carrots
Water
2-4 Bullion Cubes, as Necessary
Salt, if Necessary
And then you boil the hell out of it... But finding these ingredients is not a cake walk. Let’s start with the essential ingredient: Chicken.
I wanted a fresh whole chicken. Now in the US, this is not a tall order... The closest I was able to come was a frozen Slovak chicken... so the Czech word for chicken, wasn’t even on the package! I just hoped it wasn’t a small duck.
Bay Leaves... 20 minutes in the spice isle! 20 minutes! They were on the top shelf, in the way back. Thank god for the pictures on the front of the spice packages... Because I sure as hell didn’t know that “Bobkovy list” meant bay leaves...
Onion... It’s called yellow onion here... They mean white onion, but it’s all the same... Carrots are also pretty easy... Bullion was also simple enough.
But the celery. Oh the celery. The supermarket I went to didn’t have celery. Knowing full well that my chicken soup wouldn’t be “Mom’s chicken soup” without the celery I went on a hunt.
I walked down the street, for SIX BLOCKS, going into every open store that sold fresh produce... So that was about 7 different stores. I arrived at the next major square, Namesti Bratri Synku, and found the saddest looking celery the world has ever seen at the corner store. It was on the bottom shelf... slightly yellow in the leaves, and sort of limp, but it was celery none the less. I actually exclaimed “CELERY” when I walked into the store. I can only imagine what the store keeper thought...
I took my celery 6 blocks home. The leaves, sticking out of the bag, flopping all the way... To my surprise I discovered a horse chestnut and the shell from which it came... More to come on that after the soup...
Back up 11 flights of stairs to see Lenka who asks me for some celery. I oblige, and she tears off some of the leaves and starts eating them like a rabbit...
In a discussion later on I discovered that celery in the Czech sense is the root of the plant, not the stalk. So they would have given me the wrong thing if I had asked for it in the store...
Anyways, I took my frozen chicken out of his package and washed him. I went looking for the giblets with my tactical flashlight... but couldn’t find any bag inside... So I worked harder to pry apart the frozen drumsticks to go looking for loose organs.
I found one. Just one. The heart.
I put my frozen chicken heart, back into the frozen chicken from which it came, and put him into the pot of water. Added the other ingredients, including the celery that took me over an hour to find... after it had been throughly washed... I’m not quite as brave as Lenka...
And turned the stove on. That was at 4ish... I worked for the next hour and a half to get the pot to SIMMER, and not BOIL. Stirring the mess occasionally, while I chatted with Jenn, and the occasional stop thru of Lenka who was eagerly awaiting the final product. Around 7ish I pulled the chicken out... let me phrase that better...
I went to pull the chicken out and it disintegrated into the pot from which it had just been extracted.
I fished out and plated the pieces of cooked Slovak chicken, followed by the vegetables. I strained what I could while the broth was still in the pot. Veronika, who had recently returned from a trip with a nice head cold, was kind enough to loan me her large strainer, and when used in conjunction with my smaller one we were able to strain the broth into two bowls.
Amazingly nobody got burned during this process.
I put some water on to make the noodles, boiled the pasta to an acceptable level of edibility, and prepared three bowls of chicken soup.
Thus the Czech Lenka, the Slovak Veronika, and the American Chris, ate Slovak chicken soup, with the 6 block celery.
I gave Lenka the washed tops to the celery, as she likes to eat them (bunny-rabbit style), along with the cooked vegetables... Veronika was given a liter of chicken broth as a “get well soon,” and I put a liter of broth in the fridge for this week.
And I managed to destroy every dish in the kitchen in the process. Now that takes talent.
Now about the chestnut... I told my father what I had found and he replied, “Go plant the chestnut somewhere where someone would not expect to find it. That is what your brother would do. Who knows, in 20 years you could go back and see a big tree.”
So I guess I have the mission of planting a chestnut tree now too.
I will have to repeat this chicken soup process as I have now discovered that 75% of the people living here are not well. Chicken soup should help... and hopefully if they are healthy, I won’t get sick.
That’s the theory at least...