Spiced Chickpea Soup
This is kind of a two-in-one post, as the key component for this nourishing soup is an Indian spiced chicken stock. So - next time you're thinking of roasting a chicken, ignore all those cravings for stuffing and roast potatoes and whizz up some fresh ginger, plenty of chillis, garlic, fennel seeds, turmeric and pre-mixed tandoori masala and cover your chicken inside and out with the resultant paste.
Roast as usual and you will have a much more exciting bird on your hands, I promise. We had our Indian roast chicken with a red cabbage, onion, tomato and coriander salad in lime juice and some cucumber raita. Plus I whipped up some grain free fake kale 'rotis', but more on those another time perhaps.
Here's the original roast chicken dinner:
I already made the recent Spicy Chicken Lettuce Boats with the leftovers, and fed a bit of it to my 11 month old, so then I was left with the carcass - best bit about roasting a chicken. I simmered the carcass with a lime and some curry leaves for a couple of hours and was left with about 400ml of the most divine smelling stock ever, so I couldn't wait to make soup from it.
The possibilities are always endless with soup, but for this one I used half a grated courgette, two roughly chopped tomatoes and cooked them off a bit with a teaspoon of coconut oil. Once softened I added half a can of chickpeas. I added a tiny tablespoon of flour at this point and coated everything with it before adding the stock, bringing to the boil and then simmering for about 10 minutes. Season further if it needs it, but my stock was full of flavour thanks to the chicken marinade and didn't need anything apart from a dollop of cooling yoghurt and a sprinkling of coriander.
Makes two servings of around 160 calories each.