UNUSUAL ITALIAN SOUP - "Cheese Noodle"

A Boston friend with an Italian heritage let me a copy his mother's notes - not quite a detailed recipe for what is to me an unusal soup.

Basically, grated cheese, breadcrumbs, an beaten eggs were combined, seasoned and the mix was put through a pasta mill or the coarse plate of a food grinder. The result was a sort of noodle.

These noodles were dried for a time and then poached in chicken broth that might also have had a few chopped vegetables (onion, celery, carrots, etc.) with parsley added as a gaenish.

This sounds GOOD. The recipe notes are too incomplete for me to want to try. Does anyone recognize this soup? Can you tell me the name and origin? Most of all, can anyone furnish a detailed recipe?

Sounds like a somewhat Americanized version of Stracciatella:

Stracciatella

6 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 eggs
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Additional freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish

Bring the broth to a simmer in a Dutch oven or large saucepan. Crack the eggs into a medium bowl and beat well. Add the cheese and breadcrumbs and beat again. Ladle ½ cup of the hot stock into the eggs. Bring the stock up to a boil and whisk in the egg mixture. Reduce heat and cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Season to taste with the salt and pepper, ladle into bowls and top each serving with more Parmesan cheese, if desired.

Makes 6 1-cup servings.

In Italy, sometimes ground semolina (wheat) is used instead of breadcrumbs. The classic technique, from which the name is derived (I think it means to "scratch"), involves combining the stock and the egg/breadcrumb/cheese mixture in such a way that the mixture forms small clumps or strands in the broth which do resemble noodles. This, however, is not easy for the unpracticed to do--you tend to end up with a mess. So I think what your friend's mom was doing was making it easier--creating the "noodles" first and then adding them to the soup.

Thanks for the recipe and explanation. I certainly understand the difficulty in making noodle like strands or threads of the egg-cheese-breadcrumb mixture rather than a "mess!" I've had my own troubles making egg drop soup.

My Italian friend might was not sure of the name and I'm hard of hearing but I remember something like penne, i.e., like the noodle.

It sounds like BT hit the nail on the head. I was thinking the same thing as I was reading your initial post, but before I read his.

I had dinner tonight at a local place that has stracciatella on the menu. My mom used to make it and this restaurant does a fair imitation of mom's own, but they call it "stracciatina", which sounds incorrect. I have found no reference to it elsewhere, but it is definitely what mom made and called stracciatella. If I were to make it, I would likely add a little pasta of some sort, as I just prefer things that way.

Steve

The soup you are talking about isn't stracciatella, it's passateli. It's exactly as your friend's mom described it. You should be able to find it in most basic Italian cookbooks, or go here for Mario Batelli's recipe

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_12555,00.html

If you google it you will come up with scores of recipes. I love it!