http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/dining/22soup.html
February 22, 2006
Soul for the Chicken Soup
By ED LEVINE
NEW YORK'S melting pot is filled with chicken soup.
"Chicken soup is synonymous with New York City," Molly O'Neill wrote in the
"New York Cookbook" (Workman, 1992). "An epicurean archeologist could piece
together a social history of the city, simply by studying the permutations
of its chicken soup."
From renowned chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten to the corner bodega
owner, every cook has his own recipe for this magical elixir.
In a two-month chicken soup odyssey, wandering the streets of New York
searching for the headiest, tastiest chicken soup, I slurped classic
presentations and discovered versions with unique twists and secrets. I have
also become - so far this wintry season - walking proof of the soup's
restorative qualities.
Delis dispense golden "Jewish penicillin," usually filled with some
combination of matzo balls, noodles and little meat-filled dumplings called
kreplach. Thai restaurants make at least two kinds of chicken soup using
coconut milk, galangal and kaffir lime leaves. Chinese restaurants have
their wonton soups, and recently Sichuan restaurants have introduced chicken
soups made with prized fresh-killed black-skinned chickens, pickled cabbage,
hot chilies and pea shoots. Of course, the Greeks' contribution to chicken
soup is avgolemono. Latino chicken soups feature avocado, cilantro, oregano
and tomatoes.
But a call for chicken soup also calls for answers. What color should a
proper chicken soup be? When do you add the starch, whether it's rice or
noodles or matzo balls? When do you add vegetables or herbs? If you add beef
or pork, is it still chicken soup? Perhaps most important, can you still get
a truly great bowl of matzo ball soup in this town now that the Second
Avenue Deli is closed?
I'll take the last question first: Yes. And for the other questions, serious
chefs have picked up the gauntlet, or the tureen, to take this homey classic
and make it soul-warming and sophisticated.
Mark Strausman, the executive chef at Fred's at Barneys New York (and also
Coco Pazzo), makes a superb Eastern European-style chicken soup. It is pale
gold and flecked with fresh herbs, and delivers tons of actual chicken
flavor. He calls it Estelle's, after his mother, a Russian Jew who he says
still makes the best chicken soup around.
"It's a two- to three-day affair," he said of the soup. "Making chicken soup
is a serious process if you want it to be the real deal. A lot of chicken
soups taste as if the chicken flew over the pot."
Mr. Strausman has a point. Chicken soup should first and foremost have a
strong and deep chicken flavor, which must come from the chicken itself. The
best chicken soups taste like liquid meat. At Momofuku Noodle Bar, David
Chang's chicken soup with wide Shanghai noodles, reflecting both his
mother's Korean heritage and the experience of his co-chef, Joaquin Vaca,
working for a kosher chef in New Mexico, tastes like roast chicken in liquid
form.
"You can't deconstruct chicken soup," Mr. Chang said. "As a chef, you're
just trying to develop as much long and deep flavor as you can from the soup
liquid itself."
Thus the first mystery of chicken soup has been solved.
The Color of Chicken Flavor
Marco Canora at Hearth makes a soup that is a brownish neutral color, one of
the many fine chicken soups that disabused me of the notion that chicken
soup has to be golden. Grand Sichuan International on Ninth Avenue and 24th
Street makes two delicious chicken soups with clear broths. One has pea
shoots and tastes like spring itself, a welcome flavor to experience in the
winter. The other, made with Sichuan pickled cabbage, has a lovely piquancy
and just the right touch of heat. At the Cubana Café, the astoundingly good
Cuban-inspired chicken soup is another marvelously full-flavored clear broth
studded with cilantro and avocado.
On the other hand, the greatest wonton soup that I've had in New York, at
New Chao Chow on Mott Street, has an amazing golden broth. The broth is so
flavorful that this soup doesn't need either its fabulous wontons or its
fresh cilantro and scallion garnishes to enter the Chicken Soup Hall of Fame
on the first ballot.
The chicken soup at Pio Maya, a Pueblan family recipe of the owner Hugo
Zamba's mother-in-law, has a rich brown hue along with pieces of bone-in
chicken tender enough to strip off with a spoon.
And while the coconut milk makes the spicy chicken soup at the Thai
restaurant Sripraphai white, the soup certainly isn't dull. The Thai
chilies, galangal, lemon juice and lime juice enliven the broth enough to
make your mouth tingle.
The Bird
When it comes to separating the extraordinary chicken soup from the
ordinary, the chicken itself, of course, matters.
If there is chicken meat in the soup, it should be moist and succulent. Just
because the soup is wet doesn't mean the chicken can't be dry. Far too many
chicken soups in this town are ruined by dry cubes or strips of chicken
breast that have absolutely no flavor.
In the best chicken soups, the meat is added at the end of the cooking
process. At Perry St., the sous-chef, Paul Eschbach, actually cooks the
chicken sous vide (by vacuum-sealing it in a plastic pouch and cooking it in
a water bath) separately with dill, butter, salt and pepper, and then puts
it in the soup at the last second.
Some chefs use other meats to generate that deep, rich, meaty flavor we have
all come to expect from great chicken soup. Mr. Canora uses beef shin in his
fabulous chicken soup at Hearth, along with a turkey and a stewing hen.
(According to Arthur Schwartz, the author of "Soup Suppers" (HarperCollins,
1994), beef shin was the secret ingredient that the late Abe Lebewohl, a
founder of the Second Avenue Deli, used in his matzo ball soup.)
Once the broth is done, Mr. Canora makes chicken dumplings from thigh and
leg meat, nutmeg, Parmigiano-Reggiano and egg. The result is the lightest
meatball imaginable, which when thrown into the soup with escarole, pastina
and carrots, makes for one heady brew. To complete his majestic elixir, he
drizzles on some extra virgin olive oil and sprinkles a little more
Parmigiano-Reggiano on the top.
But chicken is not essential. At the Blue Ribbon Bakery, Bruce Bromberg's
miraculous matzo ball soup actually has no chicken meat in it, and I promise
you won't even miss it.
Don't Forget the Good Stuff
As Mr. Bromberg's soup proves, the matter of the matzo balls, noodles,
dumplings or wontons is equally important.
In a great chicken soup, the noodles or the wontons are cooked al dente
after the soup liquid is made. They should be firm and ever so slightly
chewy.
At Momofuku, when Mr. Chang prepares a bowl of chicken soup to go, he
actually par-cooks the noodles and then shocks them in ice water to prevent
them from cooking all the way through. Then he puts the noodles in a
separate container and when the lucky eater gets home, he finishes cooking
the noodles by tossing them into the hot soup.
Matzo balls should be light and airy, and shouldn't take on soup the way a
sinking ship does. The matzo balls at the Blue Ribbon Bakery have a distinct
flavor and texture on their own, which Bruce Bromberg says comes from some
of the secrets his grandmother shared with him, the use of chicken fat
(schmaltz) and club soda.
The Secret Ingredient
By using recipes from their mothers and grandmothers, these chefs reveal one
thing all the great chicken soups in the city have in common: the
inspiration and knowledge that came from previous generations. Wherever
there's great chicken soup to be found, a mother's or grandmother's love
isn't too far behind."
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company