Donna Wandrey's Basic Chicken Stock

from the Dark Shadows Celebrity Cookbook

One of the more interesting and adventurous sections of the Dark Shadows Celebrity Cookbook is the soup chapter, and the highlight of it may be the quartet of international soups contributed by lovely Donna Wandrey.  The recipes are original and were previously published in a well known airline magazine.  It was thoughtful of the cookbook's editorial staff also to include Ms. Wandrey's recipe for Basic Chicken Stock, always an essential component  to good soup making.  This is the classic version using a whole chicken that is simmered with onion, celery, carrots, parsley, peppercorns, cloves, and thyme.  Cooled and strained, this produces the best tasting chicken broth you can make.  Be sure to choose a nice tender, young, free range chicken, fresh organic ingredients, and use chemical free water.  A tip from my Jewish friends is to leave the skin on the onion which gives your broth a richer flavor along with a deeper yellow color.  Up to you.  And for inspiration while you're making soup stock you might want to reflect on Beethoven's remark that "only the pure in heart can make a good soup."  This great chicken stock along with the tantalizing and unusual soup recipes made it clear in my mind that Roxanne Drew had an adroit hand in the kitchen, captivating not only Barnabas Collins and Timothy Stokes, but the mysterious Claude North as well.  With all the strange goings on at the old house it would seem that Ms. Wandrey and Roxanne knew their way around a kitchen in both real and parallel time.  And wouldn't you love to see the kitchen at the old house?   When you're ready to make chicken stock, this is the recipe to follow.