Mulligatawny

For each one, I start by boiling a chicken, boning and chopping the meat and reserving the stock.

For the creamy batch, saute 1 cup each chopped yellow onion, chopped celery, chopped Granny Smith apple, chopped carrot and chopped green bell pepper, and 1 minced clove garlic in 1/2 stick of butter.

When the vegetables are soft, stir in about 1/4 cup of flour until the flour loses its raw smell. Then pour in about 2 quarts fresh chicken stock and stir until the soup is smooth.

Add curry paste or curry powder to taste — not less than 2 teaspoons and up to 2 tablespoons. I may doctor the flavor with ground cumin, coriander, cardamom, ginger or cinnamon — just a pinch here and there to suit my fancy.

A good flavoring trick at this point is to add a tablespoon of chutney. You may also add a smidgen of tamarind paste or lemon juice if you like. Sometimes I add 1 or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste or, if I have pretty tomatoes, I'll chop a couple and add them at this point. Now add the reserved chicken meat and stir in 2 cups of heavy cream and add salt and red pepper to taste.

Note: mulligatawny soup developed in the Madras region of southern India under the influence of British patronage.

Mulligatawny or "Pepper Water" was the answer to the British demand for a soup course in a cuisine that had none; the word mulligatawny comes from the Tamil words molegoo (pepper) and tunes (water). The implication is that the soup is often very spicy.

It was originally a vegetarian soup, but the British added meat and various other ingredients to create a variety of mulligatawnies.

Source: Courtney Taylor of the Clarion-Ledger - Jackson, Ms