I first had this soup at Scottdale CC's culinary arts dining room. It was good. Then one night we when we walked in the door I was swept off my feet by the smell of (what I called it based on the smell) chicken soup. I knew I had to order WHATEVER-IT-WAS. Well, it was mille fanti. But WAY better than ever before. Karen (faculty who's there virtually every night overseeing the students as they make/serve dinner) knows us and, be still my heart, gave us some to take home! Fast forward a couple of years and my friend Laura mentions making stock from the turkey carcass at Thanksgiving. I had some leftover pan juices... saved the carcass... and decided to give it a try. None of the likely suspects from my cookbook shelves had a recipe, so I tried Google-ing it. Most sites were in Italian and the recipes I came across had a labor/time intensive process that was simply not going to work. Then I found an outline on a blog: http://chefsopinion.org/tag/brodo-mille-fanti/ So with that as my starting point, I came up with something pretty darn tasty that bears a fairly strong resemblance to the soup from SCC. I don't know if it's traditional... but I don't care.
GOOD poultry stock*... I had maybe 5 cups total
1/4 c. bread crumbs
4 eggs
1/2-3/4 c. grated parmesan cheese
half a carrot, grated
2 green onions, chopped
3 shiitakes, diced small (my newest addition - non-traditional and very optional)
salt & pepper, to taste
Heat up stock. Whisk in bread crumbs and let simmer a few minutes. Lightly beat eggs, then whisk cheese into eggs. Whisk into stock. Add carrot, onions. Season to taste... I'm not a huge black pepper fan, but I quite like the taste in this soup. It's ready a minute or two later (don't let it boil once you've added the eggs).
* I had about 1.5 cups of liquid that cooked out of the turkey (and was not needed to make gravy). Then I picked the meat off the carcass and boiled what was left with 3 big sliced garlic cloves in about 1.5 quarts of water for maybe 45 minutes, strained out the chunks and added to the other liquid.
OR... now that we're smoking chicken thighs, I save the skin/bones and use THAT to make stock... and it's even BETTER! Plus I put maybe one thigh's worth of chopped up meat in the soup too, for something a little heartier.
