David & Sue's 'Jewish Penicillin' recipe - chicken soup with Kneidl Balls

Ingredients (for 6-8 people): 

1 boiler/fowl (an older bird) Or, ½ boiler/fowl plus chicken carcass and/or giblets.

2 onions, chopped roughly.

2 carrots, chopped roughly

2 or 3 sticks of celery, chopped roughly

2 chicken stock cubes

Salt and pepper to taste.

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients in a large pan and cover with cold water. Bring to boil and then turn heat down. Skim off any scum from the top of the soup. Continue heating soup, but only to a simmer. Do not allow the soup to boil again. Maintain for 3 hours or more.

2. When cooled, remove chicken. As a matter of personaI taste, we also remove the onion, as far as possible, but leave the carrot and celery. Or one could remove all vegetables to leave a clear broth. Allow soup to settle and then skim off excess fat. This can be more easily achieved if there is time to put the soup in the refrigerator: once cold, the chicken fat will set on top of the soup ready to be removed.

3. For the kneidl balls, we take the easy way out and use a packet mixture (in our case from Telma) and follow the instructions, which means adding one egg, mixing and then shaping into small balls which are then boiled for 15 minutes or so.

4. For the lockshen (as we call it) otherwise vermicelli, this is  widely available and just needs to be boiled  for 5 minutes until soft, drain and add to soup.