I am really proud of this little soup. It has taken some of the delectable things we have made together this week and transformed some pretty bland veg and legumes into something really spectacular.
So the poached chicken and I are having a day apart, whose clever idea was it to poach a whole chicken when there was only one of us home to eat it? Oh yes, that would be me. Anyway, after having done a quick food audit for the day I realised that my protein was a little down, according to my gender and weight I need about 41 grams of protein a day, which is so much more than it sounds! So looking back at my intake today I have had a small tin of salmon at lunch, quinoa and chia seed in my breakfast porridge, some walnuts and linseeds and macadamias and pecans, some nuts in my pesto, and that is pretty much it, I add it up to be about 20 grams of protein, and as protein is important for hormone synthesis and I am in the peri-menopause, that really is not enough. I could have an egg! 6 grams protein, ugh, not tonight, cannot face egg this late at night. I could have some more of the poached chicken, no! No! The poached chicken and I agreed to have a day apart. Truth is, I am still pretty full from my large salmon pasta/noodle thing I made for lunch, and because I was sedentary today, whilst working on my next assignment for my nutrition class, I did snack on a mandarin and some nuts and dried cranberries, so I am not hungry.
Soup! I can always fit in some soup, I decided to make this one. The little tin of drained chickpeas will give me 9 grams of protein (well, half that really as it makes enough for two) the cashews and pistachios in the pesto will add a bit more, and I added two of my consomme pods we made earlier in the week (which resulted in my poached chicken glut), which are also high in protein, according to the USDA Nutrient Database, between 4.7 to 6 grams per cup. Right, that will do me.
Ingredients
Makes enough for two
3 potatoes, peeled, quartered
125g can chickpeas, drained
1/2 a leek, split in half, washed, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
I teaspoon olive oil
Two consomme pods (go check out the consomme blog) OR one cup of chicken bone broth OR one cup of chicken stock
2 heaped tablespoons of pesto (go check out the pesto blog, so much nicer when you make it yourself!)
a good handful of baby spinach, shredded
dried or fresh chives.
Heat the olive oil in a medium pot, sauté the leek and garlic until soft and fragrant, tip in the potatoes, chick peas, consomme and about one litre of water, simmer until all of that is really tender. Purée with a stick blender, stir in the shredded baby spinach, serve into two bowls, float one tablespoon of pesto on top of each bowl of soup, garnish with fresh or dried chives.
This is a lovely soup, very wholesome and tasty and one of the things I love most about it is that it is using some of the things I made myself this week, special little flavour bombs made here, by my hands, in the Cookie House, to lift it from the ordinary to the extraordinary. I made that. This is good.