Today was a Three-in-One Recipe Day:
Simple Soup with a Twist
Pesto
Chicken Stew
Today I made some pesto using four tomatoes (blanched, quartered, de-skinned and deseeded), three cloves of garlic, a packet of sweet basil (with stalks), a packet of chopped almonds (50 g) and EVOO (100 ml). As usual, the last bits of pesto sticks to the bottom of my vacuum blender. But I was ready for this and had a plan. After pouring much of the pesto out into a bowl, I put 500ml of water into the blender jar and zapped it. I reserved the liquid for my soup, added another 500ml of water and zapped my blender jar again. Not only does this help clean out my blender jar, but the liquid makes great stock for my soup. Also, no wastage of the last bits of pesto.
Pesto
I stirred in about 75 ml of grated parmesan into my blended pesto mix to produce the final sauce. For some reason, despite the tomatoes and basil, the colour of the pesto is white!
Back to my soup. I diced one onion and sweated it in my pressure cooker (with lid off) with some butter, olive oil and my Spice Mix.
Then, I added sliced carrots, whole garlic cloves and chunks of potato. Gave it a good stir then added the stock from cleaning the blender jar of pesto. Seasoned with salt, mixed herbs and Lea & Perrins. Then, I put the lid on, set the program to “Soup” and let it cook for one cycle.
Had two bowls of the veg soup for lunch and was bored of it despite it being tasty as the only solid bits were the carrot and potato. So I took two whole legs of chicken, rubbed them in my Spice Mix and then air-fried them for 15 minutes at 200C. Before adding the cooked chicken into my soup, I first added some cornflour and mixed it up. Then, I set the pressure cooker to the “Stew” program and let it cook my CHICKEN STEW.