Good morning, and welcome to Morsels. This is the first newsletter, aptly titled ‘Letter 1, Recipe 1:Recipes for Heartwarming Broth’.
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Letter 1, Recipe 1: Recipes for Heartwarming Broth
I’ve been struggling to sleep recently. Hard to say why. Normally any drop in temperature in Brisbane is a welcome respite from the intensity of the seemingly ever present humidity. It calls for the introduction of a duvet again and the switching off of the fan with the possibility of the opening of a window for some fresh air. It’s a welcome relief and with that relief comes (as far as my memory serves me), a better sleep. A wrapped up in the covers, cosy-as-fuck kind of sleep. But not at the moment. My body keeps coming down with weird colds, dreaded symptoms but not the dreaded result (thankfully). It’s uncomfortable and anxious and without reason - at least not a reason I can place. Maybe it’s the last couple of years, or the sense of how quickly things have changed, or just this weird world we are now living in. A lot of friends have been saying the same.
People are unable to settle and while tea helps, it isn’t entirely the answer. This happened to me around this time last year as well, locked down, waiting for my flight back here to the promised land. A Finnish friend suggested I drink broth before bed: any broth, fragrant and rich, in a tea cup right before I turned out the light. And I did. And it helped. So the last week I’ve been making broth again and drinking it before bed. It’s calming and it’s soothing and it works.
Below are two recipes, the first is my go-to chicken broth recipe, the second is a recipe for vegan onion broth.
No excuses. Drink broth.
—
Chicken Broth
This recipe can be scaled up easily. For every extra kg of chicken wings add 1/2 a carrot, a 1/2 stem of celery and 1/2 brown onion (skin on).
Ingredients:
1-1.5kg of chicken wings
2 carrots
1 onion
1 stem of celery
2 bay leaves
pinch of salt
Extra Virgin Olive oil (EVOO)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°.
Leaving the skin on, chop each carrot into four rough pieces.
Leaving the skin on, cut the onion in half.
In a large baking dish add the chicken wings, the carrot and the onion, drizzle with a splash of EVOO.
Put it in the oven and roast until the chicken wings are golden brown and roasted .
n.b this could take anywhere from 20-50 minutes depending on your oven, just keep an eye. My oven is a broken piece of garbage attached to electric hobs that are a joke to use, so it takes 70minutes to roast the wings.
When the chicken wings have roasted on the top, turn them over to roast on the other side (check them after 20 minutes).
Once the chicken is roasted remove it from the oven and put the roasted chicken and vegetables into a pot.
Add the celery and the bay leaves.
Fill the pot with water so that water is just covering the tips of the chicken wings.
Put the pot on the hob and heat over medium heat, spooning out any scum that comes up.
When the water comes to a boil, reduce to a low-medium heat and simmer the liquid for 2 hours.
Remove from the heat, season to taste and leave the stock to cool with the ingredients in the pot.
Once the stock is cooled, strain and enjoy.
Heat it before bed and fall into the wonder of broth sleep.
—
Burnt Onion Broth
This recipe is an idea I got from Chris Hruskova. Chris was the baker opposite Dandy 1.0. He was an imposing Nordic man. Short temper, big heart, strange and oddly unacceptable sense of humour, generous nature. Before he became a baker he was awarded one of the first Michelin stars for new Nordic cuisine at his London restaurant North Road (circa 2011). As a baker, he could throw pans. We cooked together a few nights and this recipe came out of that time.
This recipe is clean and beautiful and incredibly comforting. The sweetness that comes from it is so earthy and I would say incomparable to any other onion stock or vegetable broth that you can make. Drink it or serve it with blanched vegetables, or use it as the base for vegetable soup.
Ingredients:
10 white onions (or the best quality onion you can find)
Extra Virgin Olive oil
4 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme
Pinch of salt
Method:
Preheat the oven to 120°.
Slice the onions in half down their equator and set them aside, leaving them in their skin.
Meanwhile, turn a cast iron skillet (or any available pan) onto a medium to high heat.
Add a splash of oil and lay the onions on the pan, face down. Cook the onions until the flesh is burnt and charred.
Remove the onions from the pan and turn off the stove.
Put the onions face down into a baking dish or oven proof pot.
Fill up the vessel with water so that there is water sitting just above the highest point of the onions.
Add the bay leaves and thyme sprigs and a small pinch of salt.
Wrap tightly with foil and cook in the oven for 10 hours.
Remove from the oven, season to taste, drink before bed.
CREDITS
Recipe & words by Daniel Wilson.
Daniel is a chef and reformed restauranteur