Chicken Meatball Soup

This is a variation on the Romanian Meatball Soup (ciorba de perisoare), usually made as a sour vegetable soup (chorba) with pork meatballs. Hungarians in Transylvania will tell you that the sweet version of this soup is a traditional Hungarian dish... They're quite similar, but I bet every Central European nation has their own "traditional" version of meatball soup. And who can really say which nation invented it in the culinary melting pot of that region?
 

This is my first attempt at adapting this recipe to our needs: we try to avoid pork and beef in our diet, so I made it with chicken.

I've always loved my mother's version, which uses pork, of course, but I'd have a hard time replicating it here in the States without the home canned vegetables she uses for her chorbas. Admittedly, substituting chicken for pork makes this variation a little less flavorful, but you can compensate for that by adding more spices to the chicken meatballs, maybe using thigh meat instead of chicken breasts.

As always, I don't seem to be able to make a thin soup, I always keep adding and adding ingredients, until one pot can't hold everything, and I need to cook the soup in two pots.
 

Ingredients:

For the meatball:

1 lb minced chicken or turkey or pork or beef or any combination (I used minced chicken breasts)

0.25 cups white long-grain rice

1 large egg

salt and pepper

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 teaspoon marjoram (optional)

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 tablespoon breadcrumbs (optional)

For the soup:

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

3-4 carrots thinly sliced or cubed

2 celery stalks (if you can't find celery root/celeriac), cubed

2 parsley roots, cubed or sliced

1 bell pepper (any color will do, I used 1 green and a quarter red, leftover from a salad), cubed

3-4 flavorful tomatoes, skin removed and chopped, or 1 14oz can chopped tomatoes

3-4 yellow potatoes, cubed

1/2 cup frozen green peas (optional)

Optionally, any other vegetable you have in the fridge (such as green beans, white cabbage, zucchini). Chorba is not a very restrictive recipe, feel free to be creative.

1 handful fresh  lovage, finely chopped, or 1 tablespoon dry lovage (don't skip this, this will give the Chorba it's unmistakable flavor). If you really can't find it, use chopped Italian parsley instead, but it will not be as good. 

Juice of 1 lemon (ideally one should use Romanian "borsch", but here in the US you'll have to substitute lemon for it) 

64 oz chicken broth, and extra water if the soup is too thick

1 tbsp vegetable oil (for soups, I prefer sunflower oil, whenever I can get it)

Sour cream, chili peppers, garlic and extra lemon juice for serving (optional)

Method: First prepare the meatball mixture, by working together all ingredients (if you can spare the time, put the mixture in the fridge for a couple of hours, this way the flavors will come nicely together). When you're ready to prepare the soup, first chop all vegetables, then make little, smaller than walnut-sized meatballs out of the meat mixture and set aside. In a large soup pot heat the sunflower oil and saute the onions on medium high heat, until they become translucent (3 min.), add carrots, celery, parsley root and bell pepper. Saute the vegetables about 5 minutes, until they soften slightly, add the chicken broth, bring to a boil, then add the chopped tomatoes and cook for about five minutes. Add the meatballs to the boiling soup. Cook for 10 minutes, then add the potatoes and cook the soup until the vegetables and the meatballs are fully cooked. In the last few minutes of cooking, add the green peas. Just before removing the soup from the heat, add the chopped or dry lovage and the lemon juice. Serve with bread, a teaspoon of sour cream, chili peppers, crushed garlic and 1 teaspoon of lemon or white wine vinegar (only if needed).