“Whatever was going on in the family, Grandma would always pull us together around a full table of delicious food. She’s a simple woman, from a small village that she’s lived in all her life. Her husband (my grandad) ran a butchers and canning shop in the village and she would feed two hundred farm hands daily from her home during the season. I hope that by the time I’m 80, that I too will bomb around the village on my bicycle to head to my small holding and two allotments, reaping the fruits of my labour, just like grandma does.
The problem with Grandma is that she doesn’t have a single recipe. She just does what she thinks is best, using pure intuition and it is, always, the best. Her dishes are always full of flavour, full of fat and she never wastes a single thing that passes through her kitchen. This makes recreating her dishes almost impossible. This soup is best done with the leftovers from a roast chicken, including all the skin because you want to have enough fat that the soup is left with pearls of fat on the top of it.”
Chef Alicja Specjalna, Poland / UK
Feeds 2 if greedy, 4 if polite
Ingredients
1 chicken leftover carcass
500g dried wild mushrooms
500g potatoes, peeled and diced
200g double cream
50g flour
Method
The night before, place the carcass and the skin in a slow cooker or in a pan cover with water, place on low overnight to make the base stock.
Also the night before cover the dried mushrooms with a litre of boiling water and allow to soak.
The next day remove what’s left of the carcass, if some meat falls from the bones, allow that into the soup.
Add the mushrooms and the remaining water from soaking, cook on a low heat for one and a half hours.
After this time, take a ladle full of the stock and whisk in the cream and the flour until smooth, add this mixture back to the soup.
Add the diced potatoes and cook for 30 minutes for young potatoes and up to an hour for old potatoes, until tender. Season to taste and serve.