chicken soup

As I mentioned, there was a bit of a soup crisis yesterday, occasioning me to fetch the chicken carcass out of the freezer and bung it in the slow cooker to make stock.

This morning, Pete nobly stripped the meat off it, and there was enough for at least one more meal!

I put the stock in a pan, added the remainder of the swede/carrot combo.  Chopped a leek up, and cooked it in some olive oil to kick start it.  Added that to the soup pot, with some pearl barley, and half the chicken from the carcass, cut small.

So chickie! soup for lunch today, with baguettes.

The remainder will go for a dhal with chicken on Thursday night - Pete also cooks the dhal in this house, and I’m out at a School Governors’ meeting that evening.

So that chicken did:

• roast on Monday
• stir fry on Tuesday
• fennel and chicken risotto on Sunday
• chicken pie last night (will do another day)
• soup
• lentils

12 servings plus soup for several days.  Don’t waste food!

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woe …

I forgot to put the soup in the fridge on Friday (which I normally do, as we don’t normally eat it at the weekend). Given the temperature, and remembering that both P and I were quite ill after eating some shoop that had gone over, we have reluctantly poured it into the compost bin.

Thankfully, I had a chicken carcass in the freezer, so I lobbed that in the slow cooker and set it going, so there’ll be some stock to make some more in the morning.

:: slaps self upside the head

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four meat soup

This week’s soup is a real amalgam.

I marmalised  in the food processor: one leek, one parsnip, two sticks of celery, two carrots.  Into the slow cooker they went.

In the freezer were two bags of chicken and peapod stock, to make ris e bisi, but we decided to sacrifice them to the soup.  So into the slow cooker that went.  And two ladle’s worth of stock from the fruit gammon I cooked at the weekend (it was salty and very spicy, so any more would probably have been not very good).

Pete was getting some cold beef from the weekend’s pot roast ready for supper, so we hurled in the bones too. And finally, about a pint of last week’s soup, which had the lamb massaman bones in it.

Left it cooking overnight, and it smells rather good.

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soup mix

A load of manky old veg - spuds, a soft pepper, a wrinkly courgette and some soft carrots. Oh, and some very sad celery. Only the leek was pristine and fresh.

Diced small by hand (because I felt like it - often I don’t), hurled in the slow cooker with some barley, seasoning, water and a secret ingredient … the bone from the lamb massaman I’d made the day before. Despite there being not one single shred of meat on that bone, it gave the soup a subtle heat.

I cooked the soup for about 18 hours, then whizzed it a bit with the stick blender to stop it being just veg in hot water. Fab, and just enough left now to be the starter for *next* week.

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vegetable and flageolet bean soup

About five carrots, two sticks of celery, and a leek, chopped up small.  About a mugful of flageolet beans, soaked in boiling water and left for about six hours.  The remains of last week’s soup - about half a pint of tomato and lentil.

All hurled in the slow cooker, topped up with cold water, seasoned, and switched on at about 11 p.m.  We had lunch at about 1 p.m . the following day, and while the flavour was gorgeous, the vegatables weren’t by any means soft.  But no problem - soup improves with age anyway :)

Last night we tried porridge - it was a disaster.  We could have used the result to lay bricks!

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this week’s soup 11 feb 08

Bit late with this, as first we finished last week’s soup, and yesterday we had -shock horror- Tuscan bean soup from the Co-Op, as I have a cold and hadn’t made any and wanted soup.

The Co-Op was selling bags of “stew pack” veg reduced to 99p - a bunch of carrots, a swede, a parsnip and some onions.  Seemed ideal, so I hurled one into the basket.

Last night, I cleaned/scraped/peeled as necessary and chopped them up in the Magimix (which now has a new bowl and lid, and looks very shiny indeed).  Sautéd them in a bit of olive oil in the soup pot for a bit to start them off.   I added the finely chopped green tops of the leeks we had for supper, which I shall tell you about later.

Then this morning I added some lentils (couldn’t tell you how many - a mugful or so probably), a carton of passata*, seasoning and what looked like an appropriate amount of water.  Set it over a low heat, to mulch to itself for about three  hours.

It’s almost lunchtime, and it smells gorgeous.

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this week’s soup 6 jan 09 (blimey)

This is, really and truly, the last goose post for this season!

We boiled up the carcass, then put the pan in the fridge overnight so the fat would set.  I skimmed that off this morning, then magimix’d two parsnips, one leek, and a couple of carrots until they were, well, minced really.

I also decanted the stock into another pan while the main soup pan was washed up, as it was a bit greasy.

Then in everything went, with some seasoning and some pearl barley, and it’s been on the hob since about 10.30.

And now - lunchtime!

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this week’s soup w/c 24 nov 08

I forgot to tell you about last week’s soup, but it wasn’t very exciting, and involved grated cabbage, so we’ll move on.

I cooked a gammon in coke at the back end of last week (well, half a gammon, to be precise; the other half is in the freezer).  In fact, it was a gammon in half coke, half water, as I didnt have enough coke, but it was none the worse for that.  I kept the stock for … soup.  It went in the fridge for a few days, so we could easily get the fat off the top.

So … soup this week is one parsnip, two carrots, one leek, half a swede, a broccoli stalk (waste not, want not :), and about 1/3 of a cauli that needed eating.  Chopped small in the Magimix, and cooked a bit in some oil.  Then added the stock, about half a pint of last week’s soup, a mug full of barley, and some pepper.  And some chopped dried sage as an afterthought.  No salt, as the gammon stock should be salty already.

It smells nice …

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this week’s soup 10 nov 08

I am remiss in telling you about this, and indeed I’m sure you don’t care.  I record them for myself, really :)

I used the stock from the very last of the roast chicken.  Food processed one parsnip, one leek, four carrots, half a swede into mulch, hurled it in the soup pan, cooked down for 10 minutes.

Added stock, a mugful or so of lentils, seasoning.  Cooked.  Done.

Not very exciting, really .. but tasty.  And very warming in this cold weather.

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this week’s soup 3 nov 08

I took the vegetables the chicken was cooked on, and blitzed them in the Magimix till they were in small bits.

Added the juice from the chicken pan, a carton of creamed tomatoes, about 1 litre of water, and a cup of puy lentils.  It’s simmering now for lunch - smells rather good.

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