Chicken Noodle Soup was my favorite food growing up. My family tells me that it's all I would ever eat, and, looking back at some of my childhood photos, I believe them. My Granny kept Campbell's Soup on the lowest shelf in her pantry, just so I could pick it out. My Papa told everyone I knew, even after I had out grown the habit, that you could circle the Earth with the empty Campbell's Soup cans eaten from throughout my life. You couldn't mention my love of Campbell's Soup without him telling everyone in the room about the time I hid my Granny's keys behind a can of Chicken Noodle Soup.
Apparently, my Granny let me, at about the age of two, play with her keys one afternoon, and after doing so, couldn't remember if she'd gotten them back or not. All she could remember is that I had them. So she called my mom, who lived less than 10 minutes away, and asked her to see if I would tell her what I'd done with the keys. All I would tell anyone who asked about those keys was, "I hided 'em." It took two days to find them, and when they did, they found them behind a can of Campbell's Soup.
In all honesty, I still crave the stuff when I'm sick. Only now, I'm old enough and have enough of a culinary palette to know that it's basically mush in over-salted yellow congealed liquid.
Now I know to saute chicken, bone it, skin on, at medium high heat. I know to add black pepper and a little bit of salt. I learned to add onion, carrot, and celery before I add liquid, to intensify the flavor. I know to de-glaze the pan with chicken stock, not water, and that the brown stuff I'm scraping up as I do so is not evidence of burnt chicken, but flavor in itself. I know to add thyme, and lots of it. I now understand that I must pull out the chicken pieces, discard the bones and the skin, coarsely chop what doesn't shred into pieces and add it back to the pot. Finally, I know to add good pasta to the mix, turn the heat down to a simmer, and let the pasta cook to al dente in the chickenie goodness.
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