This recipe is low on effort and high on the taste and nourishment scales. I made it a few days ago because I was craving the comforting properties of protein, hot liquid, green veg and good fats.

 


All you need is: 

1 head Broccoli 

Half a medium/large green Courgette 

2 large Spring Onions 

1 dessert spoon Olive Oil

1 & a half mugs milk – either dairy milk or for dairy free use almond milk.

Half tin of full fat Coconut Milk, making sure you get the coconut cream solids from the top of the tin included in that half. 

1 tablespoon Nam Pla (Fish Sauce) – adding a little more if you would like the fishy taste or saltiness a little stronger. 

A couple of handfuls roast Chicken

Ground Salt & Pepper 

Several grinds Jamie Oliver’s Thyme, Lemon & Bay Salt. 

 

Method:

Cut off the base of the broccoli stalk to remove any woody parts, then divide the broccoli into little trees and cut again once or twice more to make the pieces suitably small for eating off a spoon.

Remove the stalk of the courgette too and cut in half. Dice the courgette into pieces approx 1cm in length.

 

For the spring onions, cut off the stalk at the base and about two centimetres of the green fronds at the top. Remove the top layer of onion and slice up the rest to make small discs. Chop the whites at the base across again.

Put the kettle on.

Pour the olive oil into a heavy based saucepan and heat carefully so as not to burn it. Quickly add the broccoli and courgettes and stir around. Almost immediately after, pour in a little hot water from the kettle – about a quarter of a mug and stir again, letting the vegetables steam a little and not burn. Stir on and off for about 2 mins.

Add another quarter of a cup hot kettle water and stir around again for a few mins. Even cold water from the tap if you can’t be bothered would be fine.

Grind over some of Jamie Oliver’s Thyme, Lemon & Bay salt and stir a couple of times to get the herbs and flavours in contact with the heat.

Add the mug and a half of dairy or almond milk and stir again gently. 

 

Add the spring onions and stir. Pop the lid on to three quarter cover the pan but not seal it.

 

Open your tin of coconut milk and using a spoon, scoop out the coconut cream solids that hopefully have risen to the top of the tin and drop them into the saucepan with the other ingredients. Next pour up to half of the tin of the more watery coconut milk into the saucepan as well.

(If….. your tin of coconut milk has got jiggled around a bit during the day and the coconut cream hasn’t risen and settled at the the tin, then don’t worry at all, just give the contents of the tin a good stir and continue to pour half of the coconut liquid into your saucepan as described above.)

 

Once you’ve poured in the coconut milk in, stir around carefully, add the Nam Pla fish sauce, pop the lid over to half cover and leave to bubble gently checking every now and again for about five minutes.

 

While that’s bubbling away, get your roast chicken pieces organised. I often use chicken I’ve roasted the day before and tear or chop the chicken into bite sized mouthfuls and add to the pan to just heat through. If I don’t have any left over roast chicken in the fridge and I’m craving this soup very desperately, I might buy a ready roast chicken from the deli. You could also very easily, lightly stir fry fresh chicken pieces in a pan (I prefer boneless chicken thighs) and add them to the vegetable and milk pan for the last five minutes.

Don’t be tempted to miss out the fish sauce as you won’t achieve the depth of taste without it.

I hope you enjoy this. For those of you interested in the food photography/styling side, I’ve also tried to very quickly photography this dish in two different dishes of very different sizes. They’re not my most amazing photos but good for demonstrating a bit how the normal sized more scale-y looking patterned turquoise bowl has become huge under the camera lens and the soup almost lost inside it, comparatively speaking. However I think the colours and textures go reasonably well with the vibe and flavours of my recipe so I’m quite pleased. I’m going to have a think how I could improve photographing this soup better with more time and consideration.