Knife soup

[darkemeralds]

Roughly chop an onion, two carrots, and three stalks of celery.

Put them all in a stockpot with a whole chicken (preferably a small young one rather than a massive roaster). Cover with water, add a couple of bay leaves, a dozen black peppercorns, some salt, and 4 cloves. Cover and simmer on low heat for two hours.

Remove the stewed chicken and let it cool. Coarsely strain the stock to discard the cooked vegetables, then strain it again through a large coffee filter or cheesecloth. Put it back on the stove in a large saucepan and bring it to a boil. Boil it down to half its original volume.

While that's happening:

Peel and finely dice one small celery root
Peel and dice one yellow onion
Peel and dice two large carrots
Thinly slice the white and pale-green portions of one large leek
Slice about 5 stalks of celery, including leafy tops, into quarter-inch pieces
Finely mince four or five cloves of garlic
Cut the stems from one bunch of curly kale then slice the kale leaves into quarter-inch ribbons
Chop the red stems of one bunch of Swiss chard into half-inch squares.
Split the chard leaves, stack 'em up, and julienne them fairly coarsely.

In a very hot soup pot with a couple teaspoons of olive oil, brown the onions, garlic and celery root. Add the leeks. When that's all soft and a little brown, remove it and put the carrots, chard stems, and celery in. Add a bit of the stock and let it cook away. Put the aromatics back in, then add all the leaves.

Add a little more stock and let the leaves wilt and cook down a bit.

Bung in a can of garbanzo beans, with liquid.

Add enough of the super-reduced chicken stock to make something between a soup and a stew. Simmer for a few minutes. While that's happening, you can carefully remove all the meat from the cooled chicken and slice or chop it into bite-sized pieces.

Serve in big bowls, optionally with 75 grams or so of warm chicken meat on top.

Eat some. Freeze some. Give some away. There will be seven or eight hearty bowls of delicious potage here, each with less than 200 calories (about 350 if you add the chicken). I just had some for lunch and it was yum.



It's pretty, with red, orange, green and beige things in it. I'd have taken a picture but I was too hungry.