Grandpa's Soup... and the Challenge

Well we all loved Grandpa's Soup for years and years... but it's not vegetarian as so many of you are now. The base is a chicken stock and Grandpa would sometimes add chicken pieces and vermicelli to the soup as I have always done. He sometimes added rice or orzo instead and made tiny ground lamb meatballs for it instead of chicken.

SO THE CHALLENGE... can one of you Vegetarians turn it into a vegetarian soup? I don't think the stock will be hard to do. Don't know what you would add with the pasta. Thinking other pastas like tiny shells or maybe cheese tortellini. Carrot matchsticks or tiny pieces of broccoli. Maybe some cheese. I will work on this too. Maybe we can have a New Age Grandpa's Soup!

(This is the recipe as I originally wrote it:)

Fill a very large pan with water (pasta pot sized), one or two large onions, a couple of unpeeled potatoes, a couple of carrots, wash and cut tops off, a stick or two of celery, 6 chicken bouillon cubes, paprika, pepper (NO salt, bouillon is salty). Six chicken legs or thighs or turkey bones and meat from leftover turkey. (I don’t know if this would work as a vegetarian soup--experiment--try veggie bouillon and extra veggies!)

Cook all for an hour and a half. Drain into another pan so that all the liquid is saved and cool the vegs and chicken on a plate. Add vermicelli broken into 1 inch pieces. About a half a pound and continue to cook until tender.  

Roux (creamy sauce): Melt a stick of butter on low heat, add a cup of Wondra flour (very fine flour in blue container near regular flour in grocery store) and a tablespoon of cornstarch. Mix very well, it will be very thick. Start to add four cups of milk and mix well with spoon and then beat with wire wisk to blend. Continue to cook on low to medium heat. In a short time it will thicken. Turn heat off and add a cup or two of the juice from the other pan. (Hint: put strainer into pan and scoop out the juice, this way you won’t get vermicelli.) Mix roux well and add to other pan through strainer so that it won’t be lumpy. Turn heat off.

Tricky part: beat five or six egg yolks (save the whites for meringue if you like or something else). Add about a quarter cup of water, beat well. SLOWLY add a cup of the hot soup to the eggs beating constantly. It should be poured so slowly that it is a long thin string going into the eggs beating constantly. Make sure the soup has cooled for a couple of minutes. SLOWLY pour the egg mixture into the pan of soup, same slow method stirring constantly. Mix well. You do not want it to curdle or cook. So go slowly. At this point let it sit for a few minutes and then cover to keep warm. The hot soup should cook the eggs. Now, if you need to reheat, it won’t curdle. Cut up and add the chicken or turkey without the skin. Done! (Vegetarians might cut up and add the veggies.)

Serve with lemon juice and pepper, let guests add their own.