FOOD FRIDAY - SOUP

“For each mouth, a different soup.” - Portuguese Proverb

When one is ill one should choose carefully what one eats, more so than when one is healthy. That’s what my grandmother used to say and she was quite wise knowing more about nutrition than some dieticians I have met… She also knew more about healing ills with herbs and the traditional remedies, than many doctors know about how to cure disease with medicines, but that’s another story.
 
Soup is a wonderful food and there are an enormous numbers of recipes of nutritious and delicious potages. Furthermore, soup can be a fantastic food to fortify the sick and assist in healing all manners of ills. Soup can be a simple broth made from boiling soup bones and meat, or a fish broth, or even a clear vegetable bouillon. Soup can be creamy and thick like cream of mushroom or asparagus, maybe a vichyssoise, or a substantial cream of pumpkin soup. Heartier versions of soup that start to verge from the liquid phase to the solid phase, like minestrone, are a complete meal in their own right.
 
I have blogged before about the proven restorative and health benefits of chicken soup in this post. The biochemists have determined through their research that chemical constituents of chicken soup have beneficial effects on the immune system and chicken soup can in fact be considered a fantastic food to aid in the recovery of colds and flus (see your mum was right!).
 
So for Food Friday today, soup!
 
Chicken Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

                        3 celery sticks

                        3 carrots

                        1 tbsp butter

                        1.5 L chicken stock

                        3 chicken breast fillets

                        4 small potatoes, cubed

                        20 snow peas, sliced

                        3 spring onions, chopped

                        Salt & ground black pepper, to taste

                        Crusty bread roll, to serve

Method

Chop the celery into small chunks and dice the carrots.

Place the stock, celery and carrot in a medium saucepan and bring to the boil over high heat. Add the chicken and return to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook the chicken for 5 minutes.

Turn the chicken over and cook for a further 4 minutes or until just cooked through.

Remove the chicken from the stock and drain on paper towel. Slice the chicken thinly across the grain.

Melt the butter in a pan and quickly toss the chicken pieces in it until they colour slightly.

Return the soup to the boil over high heat and add the potatoes. Return to the boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked.

Add the snow peas and onions, cover and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Return the browned chicken to the saucepan and cook for 2-3 minutes or until heated through. Season with salt and ground black pepper and serve with the crusty bread roll.

Bon Appétit!