Pimentos
2 quarts Chicken Consommé. 1/2 cup cooked macaroni. 1 tablespoon pimentos.
PROCESS: Cook macaroni in boiling salted water until tender. Drain and pour over one cup cold water. With a sharp knife cut in thin rings. Drain pimentos from the liquor in can, dry on a crash towel. Cut in strips, then cut strips in small diamonds. Add both to Consommé, heat to boiling point and serve in cups.
This is a garnished consommé in the classic style: the soup is already made, and the recipe is really a set of instructions for cutting the garnish. Precision with the knife is the whole point.
- Use large tubular macaroniThe instruction to cut the macaroni "in thin rings" only works with wide, straight tubes of the sort period recipes meant by "macaroni" — think rigatoni or large ziti, not elbows. Cook it slightly under, since the rings should hold their shape in hot broth.
- The cold-water rinsePouring a cup of cold water over the drained macaroni stops the cooking and firms the surface so the rings cut cleanly instead of tearing. Do not skip it, and slice while the pasta is still cool.
- Crash towelCrash is a coarse, loosely woven linen. Any lint-free kitchen towel or a few layers of paper towel will dry the pimientos just as well.
- PimentosCanned or jarred pimientos, the sweet red Spanish-type peppers, are still sold in most supermarkets. A tablespoon is a small amount by design — this is a color accent, not a flavor. Roasted red pepper is a reasonable substitute but is wetter and needs more thorough drying.
- ConsomméA true consommé is clarified stock, and clarity is the reason both garnishes are rinsed and dried before they go in. Starchy or oily garnish will cloud the cup. Good commercial chicken consommé or a well-strained homemade stock both work.
- Heat, do not boil down"Heat to boiling point" means bring it just up and serve. Held at a simmer, the macaroni keeps absorbing liquid and softens into the broth.
- Yield and serviceTwo quarts serves eight to ten as a first course. The recipe says only "serve in cups"; small two-handled bouillon cups of six to eight ounces were the usual vessel for a clear soup of this kind.
Consommés are named for what floats in them rather than what they are made of, which is why this one is filed simply as "Pimentos." The convention is generally traced to French service, where a clear soup took the name of its garnish. The pimiento itself is a sweet, thick-walled Spanish pepper; canning it commercially took hold in the American South in the first years of the twentieth century, and the little tins were cheap, shelf-stable and a reliable source of red on a February table when almost nothing else was. Cutting the strips into diamonds and the macaroni into rings is pure garnish work of the era, when a soup's appearance was expected to do as much as its flavor.