Since there are just two of us when I roast a chicken I am faced with quite a lot of leftovers which translates to extra meals without a lot of cooking. My first go-to is a chicken club sandwich – Steve, my dear husband is a lover of sandwich dinners. At this time of the year the sandwich is not quite as delicious as it is in the summer with ripe juicy tomatoes on hand, but I chop up some of those sweet Sun Gold cherry tomatoes and they do the job quite nicely.
Even after making our sandwiches, there is still meat on the bones so I put the meaty carcass in a pot with cold water, onion, carrot, celery stalk (if I have it), herbs, and any leftover chicken stock or “jus” I have and simmer up a rich, chickeny broth. I strain it, discarding everything but any meat floating about and the carcass. I pull off the meat left on the bones and make a soup that will be dinner one night and a couple of lunches during the week. For this particular broth, I added some diced carrots and onions along with a bag of chopped organic kale that was lurking in the freezer and some terrific Italian pasta from a brand called Rummo, a family-owned company in Campagna, Italy. The pasta is what made the soup – it is extremely flavorful and stays al dente so you get that wonderful chewiness that great dried pasta reflects. I was introduced to this brand by Rita, one of my favorite Italian baristas. Although I haven’t seen this brand in many stores, Rita purchases it somewhere uptown in Manhattan. I went on line and checked its availability and found an old review from New York Magazine where 3 NYC chefs rated it extremely low. I can only assume that the company has changed its process because there is no way I’d rate it at the bottom of a list of dried pastas. I find it has great flavor and cooks to the perfect “al dente” texture.
judithchoate.com 