Soup Time: Homemade Chicken Broth and Passatelli Soup

Given the recent fall brisk weather (which I have loved, by the way), Daniele and I decided to try our hand at a few soups. First, we made our own broth and afterwords made a veggie soup, chicken and quinoa soup (not pictured here), and finally, an Italian tradition: Passatelli soup. Making your own chicken broth is easy, and totally worth it.

To begin, place meats in a large pan filled with water and bring to a boil. You should include chicken and veal to make your broth. Also add 1 celery stalk, 1 large carrot, 1 onion and 1 tomato sliced in half for flavor. After bringing to a boil, add salt and cook on low for at least 2 hours. The longer the broth cooks the better it will taste.

After your broth is finished, you can continue on to make a veggie soup if you wish. Remove the meats from the broth, which you can consume in later meals or even add to the soup for additional flavor, such as we did with our chicken and quinoa version. In our veggie soup, we included the celery, carrot, onion, and tomato that were already in the broth and added asparagus, squash, and green pepper. We cooked on low for 30-40 minutes, added some black pepper and extra salt, and enjoyed our soup. The rest of the broth we kept in the fridge for later use.

A few days after making our own chicken broth, we decided to try our hand at making the traditional Italian Passatelli soup. You will need bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and eggs to make your noodles for the soup. Whip two eggs in a bowl and add 100 grams of parmesan and 75 grams of bread crumbs along with a touch of nutmeg. (Sorry about the quantities in grams, but given that this recipe is coming from an Italian, it is to be expected). Some grated lemon peal is also a nice addition to the mixture. 

After stirring everything together you can form your noodles. Since we did not have the correct tool to form them, we rolled a small portion of the dough into a ball and then pushed the noodles against a potato masher to form them. Daniele wants me to add that actually, the noodles are supposed to be much thinner than they appear in this picture, but I think it doesn't matter because they taste the same either way. After bringing the broth to a boil, add the noodles and cook for 10 minutes. Enjoy!