* Roast Chicken and Vegetable Soup

I've attempted to cook a chicken and vegetable soup on about four occasions just recently, and have remained unimpressed with each of my endeavours until this one. Each previous version has had similar vegetables in it, but every time it's all come out a bit... well... bleh.

The temptation to stick a load of herbs and spices in, or a spoonful of curry paste... or even a tin of tomatoes has been HUGE... but if I'd done that I wouldn't have had the soup I wanted. I just wanted something fairly simple and wholesome that would taste... I dunno... a bit... English, maybe. Or maybe I was aiming for a bit Summery. Who knows.

So... there I was, yet again thinking "Sod it, all these ingredients and I'm still not sure I like this bloody soup." I opened the fridge door and stared vacantly inside it, looking for divine inspiration (I do this A LOT... at least, that's what I tell Neil I'm doing when he comes in the kitchen and discovers me with my head in the fridge for the eleventieth hundredth time that day)... when I spotted the mustard, sitting in the top of the fridge door, frantically waving it's little hands in the air shouting "Oh! Oh! Pick me! Pick me!".

So I did. And it worked.

It took until this time to end up with something that I thought was tasty enough to share... and it was all down to a couple of heaped tablespoons of multi-grain mustard. There's a huuuuge chance that it's going to become my new spinach, and go into just about everything that I cook because it worked a little miracle on my soup. It gave it the flavour I'd been looking for that every previous version had been missing.

Even cream hadn't helped it's forefathers.

*Sigh*... I like cream.

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Roast Chicken and Vegetable Soup Recipe

Serves 4

Prep time - 10 minutes
Cooking time - 30 minutes
Total time - 40 minutes

You will need
A large saucepan

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion - diced
3 celery sticks - diced
1 large carrot - peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic - crushed
28fl oz/800ml chicken stock5fl oz/125ml white wine
2oz/50g small dried pasta shapes (for soup)
4oz/100g courgette/zucchini - diced
4/oz100g sweetcorn (frozen is fine)
4oz/100g green beans - cut into thirds (or halved depending on length)
14oz/400g can cannellini beans - rinsed and drained
200g left over roast chicken - chopped
salt
pepper
2 heaped tbsps multi-grain mustard
small handful of flat leaf parsley - roughly chopped

Method

• Heat the oil in the saucepan over a gentle heat.
• Add the onions, celery, carrots and garlic and cook gently for 10 minutes, or until softened.
• Pour in the chicken stock and wine and bring to a boil.
• Add the pasta,  simmer for 5 minutes.
• Now add the courgette, sweetcorn and green beans and continue to simmer for another 5 minutes.
• Stir in the cannellini beans and chopped chicken. Cook for 5 minutes to heat through.
• Season with salt and pepper then finally, stir in the 2 heaped tbsps of multi-grain mustard.
• Serve garnished with the parsley.

EAT