Quinoa Minestrone Soup with Kale Pesto

September 14, 2016April 11, 2020 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! Week 2 of cooking with quinoa is here and I’ve got a classic recipe with a twist. For those of you who don’t know, minestrone soup is a thick soup of Italian origin made with vegetables that range from, but are not limited to, beans, onions, celery, carrots, and tomatoes. Often, rice or pasta is added to the soup to bulk it up with some carbs. There is no set recipe for minestrone, since it is usually made out of whatever vegetables are in season. It can be vegetarian, contain meat, or contain a meat-based broth.

I’ve made this soup a couple of times before in the past, and is featured in the Mediterranean section of my blog – but today, I’m going to add a little twist to a traditional minestrone soup. I’m switching out the pasta that I would normally add to my soup, with quinoa. Using quinoa in place of pasta adds extra protein and makes this soup gluten free! In addition to using quinoa for this soup, I’m topping it off with some kale pesto as well to give the dish a touch of freshness – and of course, if you have any extra leftover, you can totally whip up another dish just by mixing it through some freshly cooked pasta! Top it of with some grilled chicken or seared tiger prawns for a complete lunch or dinner. The original recipe for this dish can be found over on Taste Australia.

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 20 MINS | SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

For the soup

1 can (400g) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (410g) Italian chopped tomatoes
150g bacon, diced
4 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup tri-coloured quinoa, rinsed
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1 celery stick, sliced
1 dried bay leaf
1 large brown onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium-sized carrot, peeled and cut into small chunks
1 medium-sized zucchini, cut into small chunks

For the kale pesto

2 & 1/2 cups kale leaves, shredded
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1 small garlic clove, halved
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water

METHOD

For the Soup: Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a large pot over medium-low heat. Add the bacon bits and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes or until browned. Remove from the pot and set aside.
Turn the heat up to high and then add in the garlic. Sauté until golden brown and fragrant, about a minute or so. Then add in the onions and cooking, stirring, until soft, about 2 minutes.
Add in the carrot and celery, together with the bay leaf, and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, for about 4 minutes or until soft.
Next, add in the chicken stock and canned chopped tomatoes to the pot. Bring to the boil.
Once boiling, reduce the heat down to medium-low and then stir in the quinoa. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.
Stir in zucchini. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, and then add in the cannellini beans. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 minutes or until the quinoa and zucchini are tender. Season with a touch of ground salt and pepper.
For the Kale Pesto: Add the kale leaves, parmesan cheese, and garlic into a food processor and process until finely chopped. Combine the juice, oil, and water in a jug, and slowly stream the juice mixture into the kale mixture until well combined. Season.
Divide soup among four equal bowls and top with the kale pesto and extra parmesan if you wish.
Serve and enjoy!

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Minestrone Soup

July 29, 2015January 14, 2019 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! Winter Warmer Month is coming to an end this week *sad face* but surely we won’t be saying goodbye to soups forever. I’ll keep today’s post short only because I am actually just writing this now (maybe 30 minutes before this goes up) and I didn’t prepare it in advance or during the day. I’m keeping it short because I’m really tired, but I didn’t want to skip out on posting.

Basically I woke up at 6:30am today, yes that’s actually quite early for me especially since I didn’t sleep well last night, don’t know why. I got up earlier than usual to get ready and head over about an hour out West on the train, to Brendon’s (brendonthesmilingchef) place for a cooking collaboration that had been planning for just about over a month now. We spent the whole morning until late afternoon shopping, cooking, styling, eating, and talking – and overall it was a successful day. I won’t say what we made today because that will be coming up for the month of August!

Okay (again I always do this), I said I’d keep it short but I’m already 200 words in and I haven’t actually talked about today’s recipe – Minestrone Soup. is a thick soup of Italian origin made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, and tomatoes. There is no set recipe for minestrone, since it is usually made out of whatever vegetables are in season. It can be vegetarian, contain meat, or contain a meat-based broth. I’ve made this soup a couple of times in the past and I used risoni pasta and added bacon chunks to it before. Today, I’m keeping it quite traditional, and used left over angel hair pasta hair that I cut into about 2cm long pieces.

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 65 MINS | SERVES 4-6

INGREDIENTS

375g McKenzie’s Italian Style Soup Mix, washed and drained
150g maple-glazed bacon, cut into bits
1 can (400g) canned diced tomatoes
1 cup angel hair pasta, cut into 2cm long strands
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
2 small carrots, peeled and sliced
1 celery stalk, sliced
1 medium-sized onion, diced
1 large potato, peeled and cut into small chunks
Ground salt and black pepper to taste
Shaved parmesan cheese
Bread of choice

METHOD

Preparing the Beans:
- Quick method: Put required quantity into a saucepan and cover with water – approximately 3 cups of water for every cup of soup mix. Bring to the boil and simmer for approximately 45 minutes or until cooked, skimming if necessary.
- Traditional method: Soak soup mix for approximately 6-8 hours (overnight if convenient) before cooking.
Minestrone Soup: Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high. Fry the bacon bits until browned, then sauté the garlic together with the bacon until fragrant and golden brown. The add in the onions and cooking until soft.
Add in the carrots, celery, and potatoes, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Give it a good mix and leave to cooking for about 5 minutes before adding the canned diced tomatoes in. Cook for a further 5 minutes.
Add in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add in the prepared beans and further simmer for about 10-15 minutes, in the last 4 minutes, add in the angel hair pasta.
Turn the heat off, and divide equally into serving bowls (4 large bowls, or 5-6 small bowls) and top with some shaved parmesan cheese. Serve immediately with some stone-baked Pane di Casa bread.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Hearty Chicken Chipotle Soup

July 21, 2015January 14, 2019 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone! Another week, another soup on the blog today! Just three more soupy recipes to go until the end of Winter Warmer Month, and gosh until the end of July as well! I can’t believe time has flown by that fast! It’s making me said because that basically means that I have about 2 weeks left in this beautiful city that I have called home for the past 4 and a half years. It’ll be heartbreaking to leave, but it’s time that I get my career life together and make that transition from uni life to a professional working life.

Anyway, enough about how my life is and will be for the next few weeks/months/years, let’s get onto today’s recipe shall we? If you’ve read my previous blog post on my Moroccan Pumpkin Soup, you might remember me going on about how I can’t believe that they don’t sell chipotle peppers in any of the big grocery stores here in Sydney. Well, when I was out doing a quick shopping run at a with my friend Marissa (basically just buying extra ingredients to go with our dinner for that day), I tried my luck to see if the Asian store that we went to sold chipotle peppers. To my surprise, they did, canned and in adobo sauce as well! My reaction was sort of like a what the *bleep* is this for real kind of reaction. I even said to myself that I should’ve popped by this store before I went all Moroccan on my pumpkin soup, and this was honestly like 2 day after I had posted my pumpkin soup recipe. Since they had them in store, and only 4 cans remaining, I decided to buy a can and figure out ow I can use them for another recipe seeing as I practically went cuckoo trying to find these peppers.

Today I had actually scheduled a recipe for Cauliflower and Stilton Soup, but instead, seeing as I had the chipotle peppers, I decided to do a Hearty Chipotle Chicken Soup. The soup that I made is the exact definition of a Winter Warmer Soup; it had a nice kick to it from the chipotle peppers, and a lovely sweetness to it from the corn, while the beans and the chicken meat bulked the soup up. You can find the original recipe on Taste of Home. I’ve tweaked the method a bit as well as some of the ingredients for my recipe.

For the chicken broth, I bought 2 chicken carcasses from the butcher and boiled it together with some bay leaves, sea salt, black peppercorns, and ginger for about 45 minutes to an hour to get the flavour into the broth. I then shredded the meat from the carcasses and used them to bulk my soup up instead of using chicken breasts as the original recipe used. I also used fresh field grown gourmet tomatoes and roasted them over the gas stove to give it that flame-roasted flavour to them for my soup. Yes I probably picked the most time consuming way to make this soup, but it was all worth it in the end I believe. I completely forgot to deseed the chipotle peppers, as the original recipe stated, before adding them to the soup, but I’m glad I didn’t because, though it gave the soup a good kick, it wasn’t as spicy as I thought it be. If I had deseeded them, I don’t think they give the heat that I had with this dish.

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 1 HOUR 20 MINS | SERVES 3-4

INGREDIENTS

3 cups chicken broth
3 small field grown gourmet tomatoes, flame-roasted and cut into chunks
2-3 dried bay leaves
2 large chicken carcasses, washed and cleaned thoroughly
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, sliced or minced
2 ears of corn, cut from the cob
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 small red onion, diced
1 can (400g) cannellini beans, drained
2 tsp adobo sauce (from the chipotle peppers)
Fresh cilantro or coriander
Ground salt and black pepper to taste
Thickened cream or sour cream
Thumb-sized ginger, sliced
Whole black peppercorns

METHOD

Add the chicken carcasses together with the bay leaves, ginger, salt, and whole black peppercorns, to a large pot with enough water to cover the chicken. Boil for about 45 minutes to an hour over medium-high heat. Remove the chicken carcasses from the broth and set aside to cool. Strain the broth into a bowl and discard the bay leaves, ginger, and peppercorns. Set aside for later.
Once the chicken carcasses have cooled down, pull the meat from the chicken carcasses and shred to small pieces. Set aside.
Heat the same pot over medium-high with a little bit of cooking oil. Sauté the garlic until golden brown and fragrant. Then add in the onions and cook until soft. Add in the shredded chicken pieces and season with a bit of salt and pepper. Give it a good mix and follow with the adobo sauce, chipotle peppers, cannellini beans, sweet corn, and tomatoes to the chicken mixture. Give it a good mix and let it cook further for about 5-6 minutes before adding the chicken broth in.
Bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring the heat down to medium-low and let the soup simmer away for a further 10-15 minutes to ensure all the flavours blend together.
Divide the soup equally into serving bowls (3 large bowls, or 4 small bowls) and top with a dollop of whipped thickened cream and fresh cilantro. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Anyway, before I end this post, I would just like to share my experiences of how I’ve heard other people try to pronounce chipotle (chee-poat-lay). The very best, and even I still remember until now even if it’s been just about 2 years ago, I’ve heard chip-poh-lah-tay from Jack Harries (jacksgap) on YouTube when he was doing a chilli challenge with Jamie Oliver, also note the way they say jalapeño, jah-lah-pee-nose instead of HAH-lah-pen-yose.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx