Jules' Chicken Soup

Jules' version of chicken soup, for me to remember :

Fry off minced garlic and ginger and onions in olive oil.

Add chicken stock** with some herbs - parsley, lemon thyme etc - and bring to a simmer.

Add pearl barley and puy lentils or French green lentils.

Add finecut carrot, celery, other root veg, potato. Simmer a while.

Add corn, beans, squash etc. Simmer a little more.

Add shredded spinach or silverbeet, and shredded roast chicken meat. Simmer another 10 min or until the barley and lentils are soft.

Serve. Great with a little sesame oil drizzled across the top. Or shredded hot salami crisped in the frypan.

** homemade chicken stock - cover roasted chicken bones, or bones from a home-roasted chook, with water and bring to a simmer. Simmer gently until any shreds of meat are falling off. Remove the bones and pick off any meat. Discard the bones & strain the stock. Finely shred the meat and return to the strained stock.

Chicken & Puy Lentil Soup

This is a quick outline of our chicken and puy lentil soup. I love the texture and nuttiness of puy lentils, and the creaminess of well cooked barley.

~Chicken & Puy Lentil Soup~
1 large chicken carcase or 2 small
salt
water to cover chicken
olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
2 small parsnips, finely chopped
3 sticks celery, finely chopped
2 handfuls of green puy lentils
2 handfuls of pearl barley

Place chicken carcase(s) in a stockpot and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and add a good pinch of salt. Allow to simmer gently until meat shreds are soft, then turn off.

Remove carcases and pick off all meat. Shred meat then return it to the stock and discard the bones and any skin. If you want to remove the melted fat, allow the stock to cool then chill in the fridge overnight and skim off the fat.

Heat a sploosh of olive oil in a large heavy based saucepan and sweat onions over lowish heat. When onions are translucent, add the other veges and continue to cook slowly to allow the onions to caramelise. Add back the stock with the puy lentils and barley.

Add more or less water/veges/lentils/barley according to how thick you prefer soup. I like ours quite thick.

Bring soup to the boil and simmer until lentils and barley are soft.

I like to add any extra seasonings, like black pepper, salt, chopped herbs, olive or sesame oil etc to individual bowls when serving.

Mum's Pea & Ham Soup

Finally, mum made this on her last visit, so we could write the recipe down. It's all things winter, thick and delicious. Years ago, before we knew what cholesterol was, we ate it with crunchy fried bread croutons, heaven.


~Mum's Pea & Ham Soup~

1 bacon hock/ ham bone
about 5L water

Cook slowly until the meat falls off the bone. Remove meat, cool liquid and skim fat from the top. Chop meat and return to the stock. Discard any fat/skin and bones.

Add about 2 - 2 1/2 cups green split peas and reheat. Simmer.

Roughly chop and add :
2 medium carrots
2 medium onions
3 medium parsnips

Simmer until peas are soft, then blend till smooth.

Serve with cracked black pepper and thick bread - with butter if you aren't worried about fats! ;)

Quick Sweetcorn and Chicken soup

This is quick comfort food. We made it tonight b/c I have a cold and feel like wet cottonwool.

Adapt it according to what you have that suits. Tonight we added beansprouts and poached egg, which, according to the boys, was very good. I had a second bowl and added lots of chilli, which overpowered the original flavours, but was very good for my sinus :)


~Quick Sweetcorn & Chicken Soup~
peanut oil
1 finely sliced spring onion (green tops too)
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 tin creamed corn (or 5 fresh cobs grated)
handful of shredded cooked chicken meat
1 tab rice wine vinegar
600ml chicken stock
2 tab light soy
1 tablespoon cornflour
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon sweet balsamic vinegar

Heat oil in a heavy pan, and add spring onion and ginger. Stir briefly, then add chicken, corn, vinegar and stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer.

Blend cornflour with a little water and stir into soup. Allow to continue cooking a few minutes, then stir in sesame oil and balsamic.

Serve immediately.

(This was adapted from a Stephanie Alexander recipe involving crab, far more subtle and authentic...)

Ginger Garlic Red Lentil Soup

We tried this recipe recently onehttp://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/gingergarlicsoup/ for a Friday night quickie. I made a few minor changes, as per below :

~Ginger Garlic Red Lentil Soup~
2 cups red lentils
1.75 l vegetable stock
2 bay leaves
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed
5 cm piece of ginger, grated
2 carrots, grated
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1 medium sliced onion
1/2 cup sliced scallions, green tops as well
sploosh olive oil
2 tspn ground cumin
2 tspn ground coriander
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper

Wash the lentils, and add to vegetable stock, bay leaves, garlic and ginger in a large pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the carrots and tomatoes and simmer until the soup thickens to the consistency you like (mine was around 20 minutes).

Heat the olive oil in a frypan and sauté the onions and scallions until translucent. Add the spices and sauté a further minute. Remove the bay leaves from the soup and add the onion mixture with the lemon juice. Serve and add salt and pepper to taste.

Lovely and fragrant, super quick to prepare, nourishing, cheap, easy ingredients - but eating this reminded me that I'm not so keen on the texture of cooked red lentils. Somehow they seem a bit like cardboard-ish, and I forget that between times. Maybe that is the quality of the lentils or my ignorant cooking? I'd make this again though - the ginger/garlic was lovely on a winter night, and if you increased the heat it would be a very good soup for headcold days.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

This recipe was adapted from a Sunbeam food processor book circa 1997. For years we used Oskar to grind up peanuts at harvest time. Shell and all, processed fine, so the moisture level of each truckload of nuts could be monitored - moisture content of the peanuts was a critical factor affecting quality, for both grades and contamination, and we managed our harvest around it. In the off-season, after some scrubbing, Oskar did duty in the kitchen, and this recipe was one of my favourites. My ex-husband didn't like it much because he was a fussy beast, which only adds to it's appeal ;)

The kids and I love it, so this is dinner tonight for us. I'm hoping to grow lots of broccoli in our vege patch this year :)

~Cream of Broccoli Soup~

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 large onion

1 large potato

1 tab butter

1 tab oil

750g broccoli florets

6 cups chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon thyme (I use fresh)

black pepper

1/2 cup skim evaporated milk

Roughly chop the onions and potatoes and saute gently in the butter and oil, with the garlic, until the onion is soft.

Add broccoli, thyme, stock and pepper and bring to the boil, Simmer until all is tender.

Puree until smooth (I like to use a hand blender these days).

Add evap milk (or cream or milk or whatever you like) and reheat gently to serve.

Roast Leek, Garlic and Potato Soup

The plan was to make roast leek and celeraic soup, but somehow celeraic was unavailable in all the places I searched. Maybe because it's an autumn vegetable and even though our weather is decidedly autumn-like here on the mountain right now, it is in fact summer...

The leeks and garlic were roasted last night while the oven was on for roast lamb. I did a tray of roast pumpkin for the freezer as well - very handy to have in store and we are about to overflow with pumpkins from the garden.

So, this is what was mixed up and it's pretty good :

~Roast Leek, Garlic and Potato Soup~
3 leeks
1 head garlic
olive oil
1kg potatoes
7 cups stock - chicken/vegetable
1 cup cream
parmesan and black pepper to serve

Split white part of leeks lengthwise, wash if needed, then chop into 5cm lengths. Place in tray with unpeeled garlic bulb and drizzle with olive oil. Roast at 200 degrees until they are roasted looking. Leave the garlic in for longer if needed. It needs to be soft.

Place leeks and garlic pulp (squeeze out cloves) in a heavy based saucepan with stock and peeled, roughly chopped potatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer until the potatoes can be squashed easily with a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes. Whizz with a stick blender to puree, then stir through cream.

Serve with finely grated fresh parmesan and lots of black pepper.