I can't even tell you how long our family resisted the siren song of this dish. When my father told us that his mother had served chicken noodle soup over mashed potatoes, every nutritional flag in my head flew up and all I could think was "bad carbs! bad carbs!". That was before I legalized all foods in moderation--and before my mother found an actual recipe in an actual cookbook for the dish, which legitimized it in her mind. I won't say which cookbook she found it in, though, because that would just be embarrassing.
The cookbook isn't important anyway, because my father doesn't use a recipe to make the most delicious chicken soup ever. His soup is delicious mainly because he makes the stock from scratch and then shamelessly indulges my weird meat problem* by using only boneless chicken breast in the final product. He also makes his own My mom makes the homemade noodles. Mmmmmm. The following is my interpretation of his their classic dish:
Chicken & Noodles
(Soup)
5-6 large carrots, sliced
1 onion, chopped
2-3 stalks celery, chopped
1 tbsp. butter
1 lb. boneless, skinless, chicken breast (whole)
64 oz. chicken broth (I use one regular Swanson carton and one fancy Organic carton, but it probably doesn't matter)
1 bay leaf
Salt, pepper, dried parsley to taste
In a large soup pot, saute onions, celery, and carrots in butter until tender. Add salt, pepper, and parsley. Add broth and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Add chicken breasts and turn down heat to medium low. While the chicken is poaching, make the noodles.
(Noodles)
2-3 eggs
Pinch salt
Flour
Lightly beat eggs with salt. Add flour until dough is stiff. You will need a lot of flour! Sprinkle board with flour and coat hands with flour. Again: You will need a lot of flour! Roll out to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut into thin strips, about 2 inches long. Allow to dry while soup continues to cook and you prepare the mashed potatoes.
(Mashed potatoes)
1 lb. russet potatoes, cut in medium chunks
Salt
Butter
In a pot, cover potatoes with cold water. Bring to a boil, back off the heat, and cook potatoes until tender. Mash with a little butter and salt. They won't need much of either because they will basically dissolve in the soup.
Check to make sure chicken breasts are cooked. Remove and cut into chunks. Return to soup. Add noodles about 5 minutes before you want to eat. When the noodles are cooked, ladle the soup into bowls containing freshly made mashed potatoes.
Oh, yeah.
*My weird meat problem is that I am utterly repulsed by dark meat, meat with bones, organ meat, wild game meat, meat from baby animals...Um, honestly, pretty much any meat besides boneless, skinless chicken, pork, beef, or turkey. And tuna fish, as long as it's in a sandwich with mayo. But no pickles! And I am not picky at all. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I would be hopeless in Asia.