Chicken Soup goes Moroccan - Fragrant Stylee (Soups)

Member Name: mattygroves10

Product:	Soups
Date:	26/05/07 (421 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Low(ish) calorie. Very yummy

Disadvantages: Lots of ingredients. Time consuming

Since December 2006, I have been dieting. It's been successful (two stone gone), but I swear I could swim in all the soup I've eaten over the past six months. I have soups for lunch (from Eat), soups and broths for dinner (home-made) and soup in my dream. I find soup is an excellent diet aid, as they are (usually) hot, and so take a while to eat, thus making one feel fuller for fewer calories. Because I eat so much soup, I am always on the lookout for new, interesting, sustaining soup recipes. Recently, I visited my mother in the States; she's also (sort of) dieting. My mother spotted a recipe in the New York Times, so I cut it out, and brought it home. And there the transformation from the printed page to my stomach via my brain and improvisation begins.

The list of ingredients is long - don't let that put you off. Whilst it is a little time consuming, it's not difficult. Because I am dieting, I weighed everything I used - hence the specificity of the quantities. Don't feel you have to stick to the quantities strictly - use more of this, less of that as your tastes (and the availability of ingredients) suits.

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Spicy Moroccan Chicken Soup
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Serves 6ish
366 calories per serving
8 g of fat
29.2 g of Carb
2.2 servings of veg per serving

(Nutritional information courtesy of www.weightlossresources.co.uk (previously reviewed) - you plug in all the ingredients, and it works out the calorie, fat, protein etc counts. Cool, huh?!
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Ingredients
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1 Tbsp/15ml Olive Oil
20 Sprays Frylight with Olive oil low fat spray
150 g Red Onion (about 1 onion)
½ Tsp salt
¾ Tsp Cinnamon
¾ Tsp Turmeric
½ Tsp Paprika
½ Tsp Ginger, Ground
¼ Tsp Nutmeg, Powder
¼ Tsp Pepper, Black, Freshly Ground
Pinch Cayenne Pepper
2 Tbsp Tomato Puree
10g Ketchup (optional - cuts the bitterness of the tomato puree)
135 g Celery (2 or 3 sticks)
225g Parsnip (2 parsnips) (peeled)
435 g Sweet Potato (1 large sweet potato - peeled)
1 Chicken stock cube
2 Teaspoon reduced salt (in the purple tub) Marigold vegetable stock powder
1 litre of water (to combine with the stock - you can, of course, just use a litre of fresh chicken stock if you have it)
750g Chicken breast, (Sainsbury's Diced Breast, Less Than 3% Fat was on special when I cooked this, so I used two packs)
1 Can/240g Chick Peas, in Water, Drained
100g Coriander, Leaves, Fresh
1 Tbsp/15ml fresh lemon juice

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Method
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Dice the celery, parsnips, and sweet potato. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, drain the chickpeas and chop the coriander.

1. Heat oil and low fat spray (sadly, you DO need a bit of oil) in a large soup pot over highish heat. Add onion and salt sauté until limp, 3 minutes. Add all spices and sauté until they release their fragrance, about 2 minutes. Reduce the heat and add the tomato paste and sauté for another minute, until darkened but not burned (if tomato purée looks too dark too quickly, lower the heat).

2. Add celery, parsnip and sweet potato and continue to sauté until celery starts to soften (about 10 minutes - though I found the celery was still crunchy - you could try adding it earlier).

3. Return heat to high if you lowered it, and add stock to pot. Bring to the simmer and add chicken. Partially cover pot, lower heat to medium low and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Add chickpeas and coriander (1/4 cup) to pot and continue simmering until chicken is cooked through and vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes longer.
Stir in the lemon juice and more salt if needed, and serve garnished with coriander and lemon wedges.

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The Changes - Explanation
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This recipe has an interesting genesis. My mother spotted it in the New York Times. The article accompanying it describes how the recipe began life as a spicy hot soup, using Harissa, butternut squash and courgettes (or zucchini, given it's an American recipe). The author had made it too spicy, so started over, using tomato purée instead of the harissa, sweet potato instead of squash ('because it's easier to peel', apparently) and turnips instead of the courgettes. The author uses boneless, skinless thighs, which are easy to get ready skinned and boned in the US.

Well I went to the supermarket to pick up the ingredients. They didn't have boneless skinless thighs, and I couldn't be bothered to skin and bone the thighs myself (as there is enough chopping here), so I got the diced chicken breasts that were on offer. They didn't have any turnip, so I figured parsnip would work well. Spanish Onion, which the recipe calls for, is a mystery in my local supermarket, so I used a pair of red onions. I also added a dash of ketchup, as I like the sweetness it gives.

Now, I've noticed that the celery wasn't really cooked enough - this may be due to the fact I halved the oil from the original recipe - it might well work better with 2tbsp oil rather than the 1 + low fat spray I used).

Feel free (as if you need my permission) to make more changes - maybe you'd prefer turnip, or perhaps you'd rather use turkey, or indeed leave out the meat all together. You could use, I imagine, lentils or another bean instead of the chickpeas. Enjoy - let me know how it turns out!

Summary: A filling soup that is almost a stew. Yum yum!