I'm bringing you to Greece with me today! It's a chicken soup, served with a beautiful poached chicken alongside. This dish is commonly made to celebrate the end of the fast for Easter.This is beautiful and is adapted from Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros. It's a soup with rice in it, though you can't see it because the rice sank to the bottom of the soup. This is a good way for me to use up all the leftover vegetables in my fridge too. It's an acquired taste but if Aaron likes it, you can bet you'll like it too! Aaron has a very Asian tastebud!

According to Tessa, egg and lemon is very popular as a finish for soups and sauces in Greek cooking and one could easily add some thyme sprigs or other herbs to inauthentically infuse the broth of this classic Greek soup.One can also make avgolemono with lamb instead of chicken. It is rich and delicious, simple and nourishing, and gives you two course from one recipe (the soup and then the beautiful poached chicken).


Avgolemono (Chicken Soup with Egg and Lemon)

1 whole free range organic chicken (approximately 1.36kg)
1 white onion, roughly cut into large chunks
1 leafy celery stalk, cut into large chunks
1 large carrots, cut in half A few parsley stalks
A few black peppercorns 1/2 cup long-grain rice, rinsed 2 eggs Juice of 2 lemons

Rinse the chicken well and put it in a large stockpot with everything else except for the rice, egg and lemon juice. Add a good sprinkling of salt into the stockpot followed by 14 cups of cold water. Bring to boil and skim the surface with a slotted spoon. Decrease the heat and simmer, uncovered, for about 90 minutes, skimming occasionally. Lift the chicken out onto a large plate or bowl with a slotted spoon. Strain the broth through a sieve, pressing down lightly on the vegetables with the back of a wooden spatula to extract flavour.

You should have about 6 cups of broth . Return this to the saucepan and add in the rice. Cook over medium heat for another 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally until the rice is cooked. Whisk the eggs until they are fluffy. Add the lemon juice. Temper the egg mixture with the broth by ladling a spoonful of hot broth to the egg, whisking vigorously to stop it from scrambling. Whisk in a little more broth, then add the entire egg mixture to the pan. Return the saucepan to the lowest possible heat and let it cook for a few minutes to warm the egg through.

Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately. If you like, shred one of the chicken breast and scatter over the soup. Serve the rest of the chicken as a second course.

Serves 4

I hope you all have had a great Easter. Mine was awesome, seriously.