Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Cleansing Soup with Chicken Meatballs


Cleansing Soup with Chicken Meatballs

 I’m calling this cleansing soup because it ticks all the boxes for my cleanse, but really it’s just a vegetable soup with Mexican meatballs.
 The soup:

 It will feed 4
 I used...
 Olive oil
 2 carrots
 a small piece of pumpkin
 the same of cauliflower
 the celery heart with leaves
 2 large garlic cloves
 chilli — red or green
 1 small squash
1 zucchini
 seasoning — salt and pepper
 1 litre of your incredible stock
 and water if needed 
 2 spring onions
 a handful of parsley
 
 Chop the vegetables roughly the same size - except the garlic, chilli, parsley and spring onion — they need to be chopped very finely. (mince the garlic if you can)
 Start by frying of the garlic and chilli once it smells cooked add
 Celery and carrot
 Followed a couple of minutes later by the pumpkin and cauliflower
 Now add the stock, bring it to the boil-then turn it down to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes or until the carrot is cooked
 Add your zucchini and squash and cook for another 5 minutes
 Finish with the parsley and spring onions — check you're seasoning 
 You could cook the meatballs in the soup, but I did them in a separate pot of stock. 
 How I made the meatballs…  
 I’ve made chicken porpetti(meatballs)before for my soup but this time I wasn’t allowed cheese or bread crumbs.
 So I did them like this:
 Everything went into the blender
 1 chicken breast
 1 egg
 1 clove of garlic roughly chopped
 handful of coriander
 1 teaspoon of paprika
 1 teaspoon of cumin
 salt and pepper
 a few slices of a jalapeno chilli 
 whizz till smooth
The mixture will be to soft to make into balls so you’ll have to get 2 teaspoons and make little quenelles — letting them plop into boiling water.
 They should take around 5 minutes to cook through depending on their size — best to check one before you serve them.
 
 Serve the soup with the meatballs and a drizzle of Nolan’s Rd Olive oil and extra chilli if you like it extra spicy(like me)!
To be honest with you, I was amazed these chicken meatballs worked - the mixture was very soft and I was afraid they'd break up when cooked - but they were incredible and so super soft in texture that they melted in my mouth. 
Tips: 
To make the mixture more workable(so you can roll them into balls)you could add a little cooked brown rice or good quality bread crumbs
I had enough soup for our lunch the next day - with extra chilli for me.
 ©Michelle Schoeps 2013
All photos taken by Michelle Schoeps

1 comment:

  1. I'm so making these for dinner this week. Thank you for the inspiration!

    ReplyDelete