Recipe - Cold Chicken Celery And Walnut Soup

2 Chicken legs
2 Onions, peeled
1 Carrot, peeled
6 Black peppercorns
1 One half l Water ( 2 One half pints)
2 Heads celery, washed
3 tablespoon Olive oil
5 Cloves garlic, peeled
200 g Shelled walnuts (7 oz)
2 tablespoon Yoghurt
Sea salt
Black pepper, freshly ground

Remove ALL skin and fat from the chicken legs, place them in a saucepan
with one of the onions, the carrot, the peppercorns and a large pinch of
sea salt, cover with the water, bring to the boil and simmer for 4045
minutes.

Halfway through this time, chop up the remaining onion and the celery and
put them to soften in the olive oil in a heavy, covered pan. When they are
soft and the chicken is cooked through, strain nearly all the stock from
round the chicken over the onion and celery and continue simmering for
another 1520 minutes.

Strip the chicken meat from the bones and cover it with one spoonful or so
of stock to keep it moist. Discard the bones and the carrot and the whole
onion from the stock.

In a large mortar crush the garlic with a little sea salt. Pound the
walnuts into this until they are quite fine (*). Then pound in the chicken
meat, which should be quite soft. Bind this mixture with the yoghurt,
season it with pepper, liquidize the celery soup and stir the chicken and
nut mixture in.

Chill before eating (**).

(*) You can crush the walnuts in an electric blender first; but do not add
the garlic, as the blender would have a brutalizing effect on its taste.

(**) This soup is best eaten cold, but is also good warm !

From: B. Allen, The soup book, M Papermac, ISBN 0333582241

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini