Relic of an empire: Mulligatawny

This is a fabulous Anglo-Indian soup. Excellent in cold weather, and equally good in hot weather, especially if you use spicier spices. I hadn't made Mulligatawny in ages, so I looked up a few recipes and they seemed to differ rather wildly from each other and from what I recalled from making it before, so I mostly ignored them. The goal here is a rich, thick, stew type of chicken soup, with curry and apples and peanuts, although some of the recipes I found left out the apples and/or the peanuts. Which, I mean, what's the point? Some recipes call for heavy cream, or coconut milk, or tell you to thicken it with butter and flour; some recipes even want you to add rice (yuck) or noodles.

I did make some dumplings for this, on request, and they were pretty good. I just used the regular old dumpling recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I've never served this soup with noodles, but it's probably perfectly good. If I didn't make the noodles from scratch, I'd use plain old egg noodles.

As always, if you do add rice or noodles or dumplings, I caution you to cook and store them separately or you'll have yourself a gummy, gloppy mess. It'll taste OK, if a bit starchy, but it'll be ugly, and it will get gloppier and uglier every day that you leave it in the fridge.

I always make the chicken stock from scratch: for this particular recipe I wanted it a bit spicier than usual, so I put a couple of serrano peppers and one jalapeno pepper (all sliced in half) into the pressure cooker along with a whole chicken, a large onion, a couple of carrots, a couple stalks of celery, a few cloves of garlic (peeled and cut in half), some bay leaves, and some peppercorns. You don't have to worry much about how you cut up the onion, carrots, & celery; you're just going to toss them when they're done. Don't add salt until it's done (and in fact I don't add salt at all until the stock gets added into whatever I'm using it for, but I'm kind of a low-salt fanatic). Cover with water and cook at high pressure for 10-15 minutes (longer if the chicken is really big). Bring it up to pressure again for a few minutes if the chicken isn't totally done to your liking.

If you're not using a pressure cooker, just simmer the whole thing for an hour or so, until the chicken is tender and falling apart.

Take the chicken out and let it cool, strain the broth and toss the vegetables (add them to dog food for very happy dogs). When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin & bones and cut up the meat however you like it. You might use it all for the soup, or you might have some left over for chicken salad or something, depending on the size of the chicken.

You can use ready-made chicken broth or stock if you prefer. Just be careful that it's not too salty, especially if the curry powder or peanut butter you're using is really salty, and some of them are. I use the kind of peanut butter that's just ground peanuts -- no salt and no sugar, but I've used regular commercial peanut butter in this recipe before with no ill effects.

Measurements are approximate, at best:

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 large onion, chopped fine
• 1-2 leeks, chopped fine (optional - but toss em in if you've got some)
• 3-4 ribs celery, diced
• 4-5 carrots, diced or cut in slices
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced (also optional)
• quite a lot of mild curry powder (and/or garam masala, if you have it) -- 1/4 cup or so, or to taste
• 1-1/2 to 2 quarts chicken stock
• 1 large-ish potato, cubed (you can use more potatoes if you want; that's all I had)
• 1 granny smith or other tart variety of apple; peeled, cored, and cut into chunks
• 1 cup or so of frozen peas (optional)
• 3-4 cups cooked chicken, bones and skin removed (I used all but about a cup of the meat from the whole chicken I used to make the stock)
• 1/4 cup (or more) peanut butter or ground peanuts
• part of a bag of spinach that you have in the fridge that needs to be cooked right away today (optional)

Saute the onion in the melted butter in your soup pot. If you're adding any leeks, add them shortly after the onion. When the onions are almost done, add the celery and carrots and saute for a few minutes. Stir in the garlic and curry powder right before you add the stock. Start with a quart or so. Then add the potato and apple. Add more stock if necessary to cover the potatoes.

Let all that cook for a while. Add frozen peas if you want them. Add the chicken when the potatoes & peas are nearly done. (Again, add more stock -- or water if you're out of stock -- but only if you need it -- the texture should be somewhere between a soup and a stew.) Then take a 1/2 cup or so of the broth out of the pot and put it into a bowl and mix it with the peanut butter; return that to the soup pot when it's all smooth and melty. This is also when you'd add something to thicken it, if you wanted to, or some milk or cream. Toss in the fresh spinach if you've got some. I'm not sure I'd bother with the spinach if I were using peas, or vice-versa.

Let it simmer gently for a bit longer and then serve. You can garnish it with snipped scallions or cilantro if you like that kind of thing. Salt and pepper to taste, etc.