Chicken Broth

TO SERVE 6

• 1 boiling fowl 1 pinch thyme 
• 2 carrots a dash of nutmeg, 
• 1 onion salt and pepper to 
• 3 stalks celery taste 
• 1 tablespoon 4 quarts of water chopped parsley

Place all ingredients in saucepan, bring to boil and skim ; lower heat and simmer for 2 hours or until fowl is tender. Remove fowl, strain soup through a fine sieve, allow to cool and remove fat. Reheat. This is a good basic soup for any of the varieties of pasta in brodo.


Try it with Cappelletti filled with the following mixture : the breast of the boiled 1 Ggg plus one egg chicken chopped fine yolk  J lb. cottage cheese 3 tablespoons grated 2 tablespoons butter Parmesan
salt and pepper. Mix well together and use as filling for Cappelletti. Drop into boiling chicken broth five or six minutes before serving.
Where cream soups are concerned the starting point is a good, rich Bechamel sauce, thinner than used when intended purely as a sauce, but made with care and using the best ingredients, butter, flour, milk and seasonings. The following is a good, reliable recipe for a Bechamel to be used as a basis for cream soup to serve four people:

IJ to 2 ounces butter 1^ pints hot milk

2 tablespoons flour pepper and salt

Melt the butter in a small saucepan or in the top of your double boiler, but do not allow it to brown. Add the flour and blend well together, stirring constantly to prevent its going lumpy. Add the hot milk slowly, continuing to stir. When thickened, allow to cook very slowly for a further 15 minutes, otherwise the taste of the flour will predominate. Add a little extra milk if it looks like becoming too thick, and if you are unfortunate enough to have it go lumpy, do not hesitate to pass it through a strainer, though if the flour and butter are well blended and the mixture is stirred constantly lumps should be conspicuous by their absence.
Once your Bechamel is properly blended and while it is 'maturing' in the top of your double boiler, you have time to prepare the vegetables for the particular cream soup you have in mind.
A time and washing-up saver is to make the Bechamel from start to finish in the top of your double boiler, rather than using a separate saucepan for the preliminary cooking and then transferring it to the top of the double boiler once the blending is completed.
One small and permissible economy that is often an improvement in flavour is to eke out the quantity of milk by substituting for one-third or one-quarter of it the hot water from a saucepan of cooking vegetables. Potato water is excellent; so is the water in which Brussels sprouts or celery are being cooked, but here it is as well to test the liquid for saltiness before adding it to the Bechamel, rejecting it if it is too highly salted, unless you are prepared to eat an over-salted soup.