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