Chicken Soup with Lemon Grass, Ginger and a Bunch of Veggies

This is not your ordinary chicken soup. This is Tom Yum meets Chicken Soup for your soul! This soup was inspired by a piece of lemon grass that I found at the bottom of a vegetable tray in our fridge that was still in a good shape and I didn't want to risk losing it to the trash can eventually. I had leftovers of a simple rosemary roast chicken from the last night and I made some chicken stock using parts, namely legs, that I cut off before roasting the chicken. That's the thing, if you buy a whole chicken in India, you will get lots of spare parts with it. Shame on me, but I often end up throwing most of them out, except for our cats eating a few that they like. But not anymore. I made some nice stock by simmering the legs in a pot with water. Then I inspected the fridge again and saw what veggies I could find. But don't be limited by my selection and feel free to add, for example, corn or leek, or broccoli, etc. Just add the veggies in the order of their cooking time. It turned out to be a very flavourful chicken soup, but not as spicy as your typical Tom Yum soup, which must be one of my favourite comfort foods in this world. I felt completely relaxed and rejuvenated after having whole two bawls of this soup at night after a long week in the office.

If you don't have roast chicken leftovers, just raw chicken pieces, dice the pieces and saute them lightly along with the veggies before adding them to the soup and cooking. You might want to add just a little bit of rosemary or thyme to the soup in this case. I added my leftover chicken with rosemary sprigs and it added a nice touch to the soup.

You will need: leftover of ~1/3 small roasted chicken, diced 1 medium onion, chopped 2-3 garlic cloves, chopped 1 carrot, diced 3 spring onions, white and green part, chopped 3 small potatoes, peeled and cut into medium size pieces ~1 cup of frozen peas 1 stalk of lemon grass, only white part, cut into a few bigger pieces ~3 cm ginger piece, cut into bigger pieces 1 green chili, halved and seeds removed 3-4 cup of chicken stock a bit of olive oil salt and pepper to taste 1. Bring the chicken stock to a boil, add the lemon grass stalk, ginger pieces, green chili and potatoes, season to your taste and let it simmer it for about 7 minutes. 2. Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan and first fry the onion till it gets translucent, don't let it brown. Add the white part of spring onion, garlic and carrots and saute for a few more minutes. 3. Add the sauteed onion, carrots and chicken pieces to the stock and let it simmer for ~5-7 more minutes. 4. Add the peas and let it simmer for a few more minutes. Just before it is ready, add the green part of the spring onion. That's it!

Enjoy!