Stone Soup

A cold miserable day today so what better than a nice bowl of piping hot soup for lunch, and what better than my favourite, “Stone Soup”. This is made using the traditional family soup stone, part of my inheritance from Granny. Granny was a master cook who had served, in her youth, in  the kitchen of “His Lordship” in County Derry, Ireland, (the old country) back in the olden days. The stone has been in the family for generations and I believe may have been a leftover from when Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway. I can't show you a photo of the rock (family secret don't you know) but here's a pic of the box we keep it in.

Rock on.

Usually it's just rock in the pot, a bit of salt and pepper, simmer till done. But sometimes a bit of variation is nice and since I had a bit of stock made from the carcasses of a couple of chickens I boned out yesterday, I started with that (the meat as well, don't want to waste anything). Now as this rock has done a fair bit of service a bit of thickening doesn't go astray, so I fired in a carrot, spud, apple and a bit of onion that I had laying around in the fridge. Rice, rice is good too so a handful of that as well, and, since I don't mind a bit of fire, a teaspoon full of curry powder just to sup it up a bit. Piping hot with some toasted home-made Chimichurri Bread you can't beat it, just the thing on a cold miserable day.

Stone soup is seriously good tucker, so good in fact I thought I should share  the recipe. Of course if you don't have a family soup stone all you will end up with is plain old Mulligatawny soup.

Ingredients
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 medium potato peeled and diced
1 teaspoon of fresh grated ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1Litre (4 cups) chicken stock
1/2 apple - peeled, cored and chopped
3 tablespoons basmati rice
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast fillet - diced
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch dried thyme
125ml (1/2 cup) very thick (45%) cream

Preparation method
Fry onions, ginger and carrot in butter in a large soup pot. Add flour and curry powder and cook 5 more minutes.
Add chicken stock and potato, mix well and bring to the boil. Simmer about 1/2 hour.
Add apple, rice, chicken, salt, pepper and thyme. Simmer 15 to 20 minutes, or until rice is done.
Stir in cream and serve.

Don't forget to put the rock back in it's box for the next batch, a good soup stone will last forever properly looked after.