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!

Amish Egg Noodles

Born and raised in and around Lancaster Pennsylvania, I have many fond memories of the weekly market visit. Once a week the family would pile into the car and head to market. For a small child market was overwhelming, with the smells, sights and people it was a place of neverending amazement.

Pennsylvania markets are typically held in huge buildings, the indoor vendor area vast, filled with stall after stall of local vendors selling everything you can think of. It was and still is an amazing thing to see. If you ever get a chance to visit a true Pennsylvania market you will not be disappointed.

A regularly purchased item for my family was Amish noodles. Coming dried in a variety of shapes and sizes, it was a regular part of our families pantry stock.

So now with the ability to make my own pasta, it was a natural progression to want to reproduce the Amish noodles of my childhood.

I thought I would make three sizes, a large flat noodle for chicken and noodles, a fettucini size for general purpose dishes, and a fine noodle the kind you would see in a chicken noodle soup.

The recipe is simple. Flour, whole eggs and salt. There are many variations it seems, some use just egg yolks, water is a common ingredient, butter, milk are also in some recipes. But I settled on the basic three ingredient recipe since I wanted to dry and store my pasta.

Base Recipe:

1 cup All Purpose Non-Bleached Flour
2 large Whole Eggs
1/2 tsp. Salt

I Scaled this up to:

765g. King Arthur All Purpose Non-Bleached Flour
10 each Large Whole Eggs
13g. Salt

I simply added all to my mixer and mixed on low speed with the dough hook until combined.

This made a very stiff dough

Wrap in plastic wrap and rest dough for 30 minutes

Divide into 8 equal pieces

Wrap each in plastic wrap

Slope the front edge of the pasta piece to enable it to enter the roller easier

Process each piece individually with Pasta Machine Roller into sheets

If cutting by hand as with my large flat pasta, flour well before rolling. You also want to flour well prior to cutting if using the pasta cutter

Folding prior to hand cutting

Ready to hand cut larger flat pieces

Hand cut pasta

Laid out to dry

Allow to air dry completely before storing- I placed a clean sheet on top of my kitchen table to dry my noodles on