Chicken & vegetable dinner soup - golden gorgeousness.

When autumn strikes, I don't know about you, but my mind immediately turns to soup.  In fact, it turns to soup before autumn has fully struck.  Those days when the weather turns from comfortably warm to "hmmn, I think I'll take a sweater with me", seem to spark off the desire.  I find myself pondering  lunches and thinking "I'll have a look down the supermarket soup aisle", not to mention speculatively considering keeping the vegetable peel for soup stock.  It's a dead giveaway every year.

Every so often, I've found myself making soup for lunch.  However, it invariably ends up being just eaten by myself as the menfolk seem to prefer beans on toast, or something in a packet involving pastry for their lunches.  Now I like soup - but eating the same one for the next four lunchtimes gets a bit dull, no matter how good it is.

So, as a result, I've been developing a nice line in "Dinner soup".  That is, the kind of soup that - having partaken of a bowlful - you know you've eaten.  A soup with a nice balance of protein, vegetable and carbohydrate that, without the liquid, could pass for a main course with perhaps a little gravy added.

One such is this chicken & vegetable dinner soup.

Now we all know the reputation that chicken soup carries with it - of being wholesome, healthy and akin to penicillin in lots of situations.  That's a fairly unbeatable place to start.  My thinking was to stay with that spirit and not add anything that would be superfluous to the cause.  No wine, or butter, or cream, or spice.  Just chicken, vegetables and herbs.  Clean, pure and simple.

The task was to get every last bit of chicken flavour into the soup and prevent it from becoming a vegetable soup with chicken, yet not cook the chicken to within an inch of its life.  I think my method of poaching the chicken in the soup stock, then removing it and adding it back at a later stage, took advantage of both those requirements.  The stock had the benefit of the chicken cooking in it, but the late addition of the chicken prevented the meat from becoming overcooked.  Perfect.  In the meantime, the veggies had a lovely time bathing in some very chickeny chicken stock and all of them were chosen to complement the chicken flavour in one way or another.

I will admit to having a terrible wrangle with myself over pasta versus dumplings.  I did SO want to include dumplings, but I also wanted to include pasta - and I knew we were going to be eating the soup with crusty bread so three major carbohydrate sources was just a carb too many.  In the end, I dropped the idea of the dumplings in favour of keeping the soup relatively fat free and light.  However, if you want to swap the pasta in favour of dumplings, then go right ahead.  I won't argue and neither will your diners, I'm sure!

I hadn't intended for the bite-sized chunks of veggies to cook quite as much as they did.  I had in mind that the veggies that were chopped small would ultimately dissolve into the soup and the bite sizes would stay cleanly cut, but tender to the bite.  Well, the former happened, but the latter didn't.  Ultimately though, I was so pleased with how the soup finished.  I think the cleaner cut, just beyond al dente vegetables would have detracted from the comfort food nature of this soup - and you all know what a complete sucker I am for comfort food.

The flavour was super-chickeny, the chicken wasn't dry at all, each vegetable could be discerned in a spoonful (well, except maybe for the onion and garlic that were just part of the general melange) and crusty bread dipped into the broth was just divine.  Hubby abstained from dinner that night, but son & heir declared that not only was the soup delicious, but it was most definitely a "do it again" recipe.  On you come, autumn.  I've got this under control.

CHICKEN & VEGETABLE DINNER SOUP   (serves 4-5)

Ingredients :

1 litre chicken stock
quarter of a tsp dried thyme
quarter of a tsp dried tarragon
half a tsp dried parsley
half a tsp ground black pepper
2 skinless & boneless chicken breasts
1 skinless chicken leg or 2 skinless chicken thighs
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped fine
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 carrot, half sliced, half chopped fine
1 leek, halved and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 celery sticks, half of one chopped fine, the remainder cut into pieces
half a butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and cut into bite sized chunks
2 small potatoes, one cut into small chunks, one in bite sized chunks
1 red pepper, cored and cut into bite sized chunks
1 sweetcorn cob's-worth of kernels
1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 large handfuls of dry macaroni
sea salt, if necessary
2 good handfuls of frozen peas.

Method :

Make up the litre of chicken stock (if you're using a cube, use one and a half for extra flavour) in a pan and add the thyme, tarragon, parsley and black pepper to it.   Bring to a gentle boil and add the chicken.  Simmer gently for 15-20 minutes or until the chicken is just cooked and will shred with two forks.

Remove the chicken from the stock and reserve.

Pour the stock into a separate container and reserve.  Rinse out the saucepan, to remove any scum stuck to the sides.

Add the olive oil to the pan and on a moderate heat, add the onion and garlic.  Cook, stirring regularly, until transparent.  Make sure not to colour the onion at all.

Add the carrot, leek, butternut squash, potato, sweetcorn, celery and red pepper along with the reserved stock, rosemary and bay leaf.

Bring back to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the vegetables are just soft.

In the meantime, shred the chicken breasts and the meat from the chicken leg or thighs.  Discard the bones.

Add the chicken and dry macaroni to the pot and simmer until the macaroni is done.

A few minutes before the macaroni is cooked, taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary, then add a handful of frozen peas and simmer until the peas are piping hot.

Serve with chunks of crusty bread and fresh butter.

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Five spice & honey chicken with mushroom noodle stir fry

Well this is the one that very nearly didn't happen.

The menu plan this week has had several different re-writings and re-shufflings largely due to circumstances changing at the last minute.  As a result, this recipe got bounced off the list, then I forgot to get something else out of the freezer and suddenly it was back on again!

I'm glad I made it though, as it was really rather good.

It's all part of my on-going love affair with the chicken leg.  As I've said before, I like chicken breast meat well enough - I just prefer the darker meat.  As our butcher sells 5 good sized chicken breasts for £5, I'd been having that right up until it suddenly dawned on me that if I bought a chicken leg at the same time, that amounts to two dinners (three breasts/two breasts & a leg) as opposed to one and a bit.  I know, I can't believe I didn't work this out sooner as well - but sometimes the obvious is the last thing we notice.
 

 All dressed in their spicy goo and ready for the oven

Well, I've done chicken in curry, chicken in citrus, chicken in a hat (alright, maybe not in a hat) but whatever there is to put chicken in, it feels like I've put it in it.  However, up until now, I hadn't investigated the Chinese 5 spice route.  Can't say that any more!

As I was pondering on what to put with the 5 spice, I had the dulcet tones of hubby running through my head.  He was expounding on the fact that "the Eastern thing is the balance of salty/sweet/ sour etc.", so I kind of went along with that - except I totally missed out the sour thing.  As they say in America, "so bite me".  (Except, I'd really rather you didn't, on the whole).  What I wound up with was the 5 spice for flavour, rapeseed oil to encourage the cooking and crisp up the skin on the chicken leg, honey for the sweet (and to caramelise slightly, which always looks great), soy sauce for the salty, a cheeky pinch of dried red chilli flakes for interest - and thought "that'll do!".  Yes, I could have gone the whole hog and added some lemon juice, or vinegar or some other source of sour, but I was interested to know how the unbalanced version would come out.  As it turned out, it was very nice indeed.  (Thank goodness!).

Stir fry ingredients : check. But where's the noodles?

So, what to put with it?  After all, a woman (or her menfolk) cannot live by chicken alone.  (More's the pity).  Well, with it being Chinese 5 spice, stir fry was the obvious choice and as we still had to settle on a carb. of some kind, a noodle stir fry made sense.
 

Yum - looks healthy!

Now I know that stir fry isn't right up there on son & heir's list of favourite foods, but it's good for him to re-visit foods he hasn't enjoyed, every so often.  He appears to be over his mushroom dislike of earlier years.  Which is just as well, as Asda - in their infinite wisdom - decided to send us a mushroom stir fry pack instead of the Edamame bean stir fry pack such as I'd ordered.  ~shrug~  Oh well, life is all about making the most of what you've got, so that's what we went with.  Of course, the extra mushrooms I'd bought to pad out the Edamame bean stir fry were a bit superfluous, but I chucked them in anyway.   I'd also ordered a pack of mange tout peas - some for the stir fry and some for a salad later in the week and they went in too.  They added a lovely sweet note to the veggies, which would have been a bit cabbage heavy without them.  Yes, Asda's "mushroom stir fry" turned out to be more of a "cabbage stir fry with the occasional mushroom", so it was good that I had a few extra.

At one time, I'd have been happy to have just had the veggies stir fried along with the chicken, but these days I think it is important to have a little carbohydrate in your main meal.  The end result of not having carbohydrates, is just that everyone starts reaching for the bread or crisps at around 8pm.  Truth be told, they do that anyway - but with rather less conviction if they've had carbs in their meal.  Now, because I was including noodles in the stir fry, this meant I needed to also come up with some kind of sauce to include in the wok which would lubricate the noodles and prevent that clagginess that they can sometimes have.  I'm not sure what I had against sour notes for this meal time, but they were very definitely off the menu as I decided to go with the classic dark soy sauce/light soy sauce/mirrin/fish sauce combo - which worked as perfectly as it always does.  This sauce combination gives such lovely colour to your stir fry and more to the point, gives a lovely rich flavour.

Now, a word must be had as regards oil.  If you've been reading along over the years, you'll know that I fairly recently eschewed the use of olive oil in favour of our lovely locally produced rapeseed oil - for the health benefits as much as anything.  As much as I love my rapeseed oil, it does have the unfortunate habit of spitting every flipping where if you use it at high temperature.  I've got a bit fed up with it doing that - and consequently ruining whatever I happen to be wearing at the time, as I've pretty much always forgotten to put an apron on.  We've always got sunflower oil in the house, as there are just some things that are better fried in sunflower than rapeseed (not many though, I'll grant you that!).  However with a stir fry, because the veggies are fried for so short a time it always feels as though the oil is much closer to the surface than with other types of cooking and consequently, you want an oil that has a lovely flavour.  My oil of choice is groundnut oil.  Not surprisingly, it has a lovely, light and delicate nuttiness that goes so well with stir fry dishes and complements curried dishes too, without any of the heaviness that accompanies a mixed vegetable oil or indeed olive or rapeseed.  If you haven't tried groundnut oil, I heartily recommend you get some in and give it a go.  Not as your everyday oil - you want something healthy and full of the lovely omega fats for that - but for stir fries and curries.  You'll be surprised.

So there we have it!  I don't have any special points to make as regards the cooking, as that is simplicity itself.  As regards the chicken, you can cook the breasts for the same time as the legs, so long as you remember to joint the leg portion.  Just cut across the hinge joint and separate it into a drumstick and a thigh.  That way it will cook a lot more quickly and correspond with the time it takes the breast to cook.

Use your own choice of stir fry veggies - they all take roughly the same amount of time to cook.  Just remember if you're adding any extra veg., to cut it into similar sized pieces so that it all cooks in the same time scale.  I sliced my mushrooms and cut the mange tout peas into three, which did the trick.

Mmmmn .... yummy chicken rules!


FIVE SPICE & HONEY CHICKEN with MUSHROOM NOODLE STIR FRY   (serves 3)

Ingredients :

3 chicken portions (I used 2 skinless boneless breasts and 1 leg)
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 tbsp runny honey
2 rounded tsp Chinese five spice
a good pinch of dried red chilli flakes
1 tbsp light soy sauce plus another 2 tbsp
a pinch of sea salt & ground black pepper
2 tbsp groundnut oil
4 large chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
40g mange tout, each cut into three pieces
400g pack of fresh stir fry vegetables (cabbage, carrot, beansprouts, pepper etc.)
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp mirrin
2 tsp grated ginger (from a jar, but feel free to use fresh)
3 sheets of dried egg noodles.

Method :

1.  Score the chicken breasts lightly across in a diamond pattern, to encourage the absorption of their marinade.  Score the leg portion similarly.

2.  In a bowl, mix together the rapeseed oil, honey, 5 spice, chilli flakes, 1 tbsp light soy sauce and some salt and pepper.   Add the chicken and toss until completely coated.  Allow to sit for as long as until you have the baking dish and veggies for the next stage prepared.

3.  Slice the mushrooms and mangetout and chop the garlic.

4.  Into a small bowl, add the 2 tbsp light soy sauce, the dark soy sauce, fish sauce, mirrin and ginger and stir to combine.

5.  Place the chicken onto a baking dish with a lip - as it will generate some liquid that you don't want to spill all over the kitchen floor - and place into a pre-heated oven at 190degF/375degC/Gas 5 for 30 minutes or as long as until the juices from the chicken run clear.

6.  When the chicken has just 15 minutes to go, bring a saucepan of water to the boil and add the groundnut oil to a wok.  Heat the oil until almost smoking, then add the sliced mushrooms and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.  Add the contents of the stir fry pack, the mangetout and the garlic and stir fry until tender.

7.  When the chicken has just 5 minutes to go, add the sheets of dried noodles to the boiling water and simmer for 4 minutes or until the noodles are soft.  Drain and return to the saucepan.

8.  Add the soy sauce/mirrin/fish sauce/ginger mixture to the wok and allow to frizzle and reduce whilst you add the noodles.  Toss and stir to make sure the noodles are coated in the sauce and vegetables.

9.  Remove the chicken from the oven and serve with the noodle stir fry alongside.

Printable version

Tandoori Chicken (without a Tandoori Oven) from The Curry Guy

The most important thing to say about this Tandoori Chicken recipe - and so this is why I'm saying it now, right at the start - is that, red food colouring or no red food colouring, the flavour is absolutely to-die-for.

Thank you, that is all.

Or - not quite all.  *chuckle*  Well, you wouldn't expect me not to rabbit on a bit about such a terrific recipe, now would you?

The thing is, that I've tried a number of recipes for oven-baked Tandoori Chicken and everything prior to this has left me with egg on my face, wishing I'd not have bothered.

What led me to have enough faith in this recipe to try it, was a) it came from www.greatcurryrecipes.net - or "Indian Food Recipes - made easy" which is a website written by @TheCurryGuy, Dan Toombs, and b) I've tried several of Dan's recipes - all of which have been brilliant.

I was determined, since I discovered that our butcher is now selling chicken legs as well as breast meat, that I would have a chicken leg - as I felt sure that the flavour would be greater and anyway, I prefer leg meat.  Son & heir likes the flavour of leg meat, but likes the sheer quantity of meat you get from the breast.  Hubby is a confirmed chicken breast devotee, as he hates any hint of fat on his meat.  So, as you can see, there was a very differing set of requirements here!

However, I bought two legs and two breasts of chicken - and we divided them up amongst us.  The legs I jointed into thighs and drumsticks on the reckoning that it would be far easier to handle that way around - and Tandoori Chicken was made to be eaten without knives and forks.

I will admit to going about the recipe all the wrong way - owing largely to an over keenness to get the chicken marinading.  I was so worried that I'd forget to marinade it!

I should have let the chicken sit in salt, food colouring and lemon juice before covering with the marinade, but in fact, I just included the salt and lemon juice in the marinade and let them sit in the lot.  I doubt this made a great deal of difference to the flavour, but it certainly made a difference to the colour, as all traces of food colouring were washed away by the yoghurt.  Still, it didn't make any difference at all to the flavours, which were just out of this world.


The oven roasting took a wee bit longer than I had anticipated - probably because my chicken pieces were massive - but it was worth giving it that extra 10 minutes to allow a little charring to appear.  Under the marinade, the chicken was softly moist and delicious while the marinade made us gasp a tiny bit from the chilli heat - oh boy, but it was good.

Everyone - son & heir included - completely loved this recipe.  The chilli aspect is something that is within your own control, in that if you aren't good with hot spicy food, then just don't use as many chillis.  So there's no need to not enjoy such a cracking recipe - just tone it down to your own taste.


I haven't reproduced the recipe here, as I followed it pretty much as it was written.  Do go to this link and see whether you fancy having a go at it - it honestly, couldn't be much easier - and the results are completely fabulous.


I served my Tandoori Chicken with some Saffron Rice and a little salad of red onion, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and coriander that had been dressed with a little lemon juice.


This was my recipe of the week - and I thoroughly recommend it to you!


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