Amish Chicken Noodle Soup with Porcini Mushrooms

It's the middle of January, 2014; the country has experienced record cold, record snowfall. Atlanta was paralyzed by 2" of snow a few weeks back, and the North East just got another historic snow storm two days ago. BTW Atlanta was better prepared for that one. Here in the Midwest we haven't seen temps above freezing for weeks. Most of the time it's been near zero with wind chills well below that.

So why not warm the heart with some old fashioned chicken noodle soup? Especially since I spent the weekend past making Amish Noodles in different sizes, one of which was "fine" which will lend itsefl perfectly to this recipe.

My endeavor was to make Amish Chicken Noodle Soup and when I Googled it, all the recipies came up with ingredients pretty much as expected, with the addition of apples. Apples in chicken noodle soup I had never heard of. But over and over each recipe for "Amish" chicken noodle soup called for a "tart apple".

So be it, who was I to judge. May be that was what other than the Amish Noodles, what made it Amish.

So I began, I prepared the ingredients and started to cook. As I had the carrots, celery, and onions in the Dutch Oven, a thought suddenly struck me, Porcini Mushrooms. How wonderful they would be in this. And I happen to have some premium dried Porcini's in the panty.

So everything stopped while I soaked some dried porcinis.

Here is the resulting recipe:

140g - Onion - diced
320g - Celery - diced
320g - Carrots - diced
80g - Tart Apple - peeled, cored, diced, tossed in a lemon wash to keep it from oxidizing
44g - Dried Porcini Mushrooms - chopped coarse - soaked in warm water for 30 minutes, drained well, add drained liquid to Chicken Stock
590g - Chicken Meat, white and dark, cooked, preferably from a roasting chicken for the flavor but you can simply boil a whole chicken and debone
2.5 Quarts of Chicken Stock - Home made of course
Dab of good quality Chicken Base
Chopped Italian Parsley - you be the judge how much, I didn't have fresh so I used crappy dried
4 cups Fine Amish Egg Noodles
Salt to taste
White Pepper to taste

Mise En Place

This is very good Chicken base

Dice all as small and as uniform as possible

Sauté Onion, Celery and Carrots in a good quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil until tender

This is good Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Dried Porcini Mushrooms

Soak in warm water for 15-30 minutes, drain

Add Apples and Mushrooms

• Sauté until heated
• Add Chicken Meat
• Sauté until heated
• Season with Salt and Pepper lightly - do not overdo this, you will adjust at the end

Add Chicken Stock and Chicken Base, mix well

Bring to a simmer

• Simmer 20 minutes
• Add Parsley and adjust Salt and Pepper to taste one last time
• Bring to a rolling boil

Add Amish Egg Noodles

• Maintain rolling boil until noodles are cooked, approximately two minutes
• Don't forget to serve with Saltines

Just had my first bowl, Oh My God Good!