Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

I’ve been absent for quite a while, and the story and recipe that I am about to relate is old. I’ve been busy—painfully busy—for these past few months and, while I had a chance to scribble down my recipe soon after creating this soup, I have only now found the time to relate it here. Yes, the past few months have been a whirlwind of seemingly constant work—at various jobs—sprinkled with exercise, dinners at home, sleep…and very little else. But I’ve finally found a moment to tell the story of a woman on the edge of mental collapse, a man with a sudden flu and the pot of soup that helped us both recover.

I had a very rough time last fall—fighting a gargantuan workload and an ever-deepening depression that I seemingly could not conquer. I seem to have rebounded to an extent, although I occasionally swing back into hopelessness and despair—just now the trips are shorter in duration and perhaps lack the depth of my previous journeys. I’ve mostly been working from home since last July (except for my now once-weekly stint at the bakery), so I was here the day that Jim woke up to discover that he had somehow caught a nasty flu-like sickness. He rides the metro everyday with throngs of sick people and works in somewhat close quarters with people he often describes as “freaks”, so his acquiring a flu came as no great surprise. He was sniffly, feverish and physically beat. Despite my own misery at the time, I could not help but to feel overwhelmingly that I wanted to erase his pain, to make him better.

I find my reaction to his suffering sort of curious. He was in pain and miserable, and even though I was wallowing in my own special type of misery at the time, the desire—or need, even—to erase his pain and make him feel better took me over. It became my quest…until I realized that there’s really not much I could do for him, aside from offering pity. There’s a terrible helplessness involved when you want so badly to fix what you could never really have a hope of changing. Borne of this helplessness was my offer to make him soup…if he wanted it (when he gets sick he’s usually not much of an eater—even when he really needs some sustenance). It was really the only thing I had to offer, other than the aforementioned pity and spoken expressions of care and love. Faced with the array of soup choices that I put before him, he selected a chicken soup with wild rice.

So, in the mid-afternoon, I took a break from work to ascend to the kitchen and begin my feeble attempt at curing his sickness. This offered me a nice two-hour respite from my work, and the opportunity to fiddle about in the kitchen…but it also ensured that I’d be working while I ate dinner and far beyond. After we both finished dinner, I continued to work on my computer in the basement and he lay feet away from me on the couch, still feeling like crap. Finally, when I had enough of work for the day and could hardly see straight, I announced that I was off to bed. I walked over and gave him a kiss goodnight on the cheek (so as not to catch his foul sickness). He turned and looked up at me and said, “You always take such good care of me when I’m sick. Thank you.”. For what seemed like the first time in weeks, I cracked a smile. It was a much-needed reminder that there are some things special enough to make life worthwhile, even when it seems so tough. He’s one of them, for sure.

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Ingredients:
3 Boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 whole onion, peeled
10 whole cloves
1 onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
3 stalks celery, diced (reserve the tops and leaves of the celery, to flavor the stock)
1 leek, well rinsed and cut into small pieces (whites and middle whites only—no greens)
8 cloves of garlic, minced
10 cremini mushrooms, sliced
15-20 sprigs of fresh thyme
4-5 branches rosemary
2 bay leaves
dried thyme (2 t ?)—adjust to your taste*
dried rosemary (1 t ?)—adjust to your taste*
dried rubbed sage (1 t ?)—again, adjust to your taste*
Fresh Italian parsley, chopped (about ¼ c)
1 14 oz can of fire roasted diced tomatoes, drained
1 cup of white wine**
½ cup of wild rice, rinsed
2-3 boxes of low sodium chicken broth

*Read: this is an estimate; I failed to write down the amount.
**I prefer to cook with Sauvignon Blanc. I avoid Chardonnay because its oaky quality will become too concentrated in the final product. I avoid Pinot Grigio because I really can’t stand to drink it…so that bottle is going to be around for a long, long time. Sauvignon Blanc I find to be non-objectionable as a drinking wine, and it doesn’t seem to have an off impact on the flavor of the final dish.

Method:
Stud the whole peeled onion with cloves. (Both the onion and the cloves add great depth to a poultry based broth, as they simmer with the other ingredients. The same might be true for vegetable stocks or other meat based stocks, but I have not experimented with that yet.)

One onion, studded

Make a bouquet garni: with kitchen twine, tie together the celery tops, whole thyme sprigs, and rosemary branches. (You can see in the picture that this time I didn’t tie the celery tops in, and instead just added them separately—in subsequent soups, they’ve gone in my bouquet garni instead, and it’s worked well…so my photos and instructions here are not in complete agreement). This quick operation will make your life so much easier when the soup is done—the herbs release a wonderful flavor and you only have to fish out one large, obvious bundle of herbs instead of hunting down individual branches.

My bouquet garni

Brown the chicken breasts in a soup pot that’s been lightly coated in olive oil (spray if you can)—not until they’re cooked through, but at least until they’re browned on each side (this will provide some additional flavor, both to the chicken itself and to the ingredients that are subsequently cooked in the pot). When browned, remove the chicken breasts to a plate and set aside. Add onions, leeks, carrots and celery to the pot. As they start to exude their juices, scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot (the “fond”, source of oh-so-much-flavor). When the veggies have softened (not browned), add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant—about 1 minute. Add the dried herbs (thyme, rosemary and sage), stirring to combine. Add the white wine and allow the moisture to cook off. Add the tomatoes and chicken broth (I gave a range above—start with an amount and keep adding to achieve what ever consistency you would describe as “soup”—my soups tend to be a tad “stew-like”). Add the studded onion, bouquet garni (and the celery tops if you didn’t include them in the bouquet garni), bay leaves, salt and pepper. Nestle the chicken breasts into the mixture (and pour in any accumulated juices on the plate), bring the broth to a slow boil and cover, lowering heat to maintain the slow boil. Cook until the chicken is done

When the chicken is cooked through, remove the breasts from the soup to a clean plate. When cool enough to handle, shred the chicken into small pieces and return it to the soup. Add the wide rice, return the soup to a boil, cover, lower heat and cook until the rice is done, about 45-55 minutes. Add additional broth as necessary during the cooking to maintain the desired consistency. Before serving, remove the studded onion, bay leaves and bouquet garni (and celery tops if added separately). Serve, enjoy, heal.

Bouquet garni and onion, spent and removed from the soup.