Chicken Broth With Pasta

No one makes chicken broth anymore, have you noticed that? It’s always called soup regardless of how it’s made or what goes in it. This is a broth.

The recipe is for six people and it will not keep very well on account of the pasta, which would be overcooked by the time you reheated it. So a clever trick would be to cook the pasta separately and only add it when you serve up.

Here’s the all-in method.

3 liters of chicken stock
6 peppercorns
2 whole cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of tarragon
4 chicken breasts
180g small shell pasta, or similar
1 chopped onion
1 finely chopped red bell pepper
1 carrot, thinly sliced
¼ of a Chinese cabbage, shredded

Bring the stock, peppercorns, bay leaf, garlic and tarragon to the boil in a pot large enough to hold the chicken breasts. Reduce to a simmer, add the breasts and poach for 20 minutes, lightly covered.

Remove the chicken from the stock and allow them to cool. Strain the liquid into a clean saucepan and add the vegetables, but not the cabbage. Simmer for 15 minutes before adding the pasta. Simmer for a further five minutes.

While that’s going on, cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Finally add the chicken and cabbage to the broth and simmer for five minutes, at which time the pasta should be nicely cooked.

Serve with a sprinkling of chopped flat-leaf parsley or even grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese.

Alphabet Soup
To encourage those picky eaters, replace the pasta shells with alphabet pasta and cook in the same way.

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