Chicken & Spinach Soup

I love soups! It makes me very energetic and whenever I step in to Restaurants, I make sure that soup is also ordered. I love tasting variety of soups but being a solo soup lover its very difficult to try at home. Luckily this month theme for "5 Ingredient Fix Challenge" by Lakshmi vimala was Soup. Every month, 5 Ingredients will be declared by her and its our challenge to try out something Innovative. And coming to March month, we got 5 Lovely ingredients " Olive Oil", "Homemade Stock", "Chicken or Veg", "Green leafy veggie" and "any kind of pulses". And keeping all my challenge ingredients, tried this delicious soup for our Sunday lunch menu which turned out a huge hit :)

Adding pureed dal gives a creamy and thick consistency so adding of corn flour is not necessary. This can be served as warm soup with fresh cream on top along with croutons or can also be served with hot rice. My son loved it with hot rice and ghee. 

And here is my march month challenge.....

Ingredients:

For Stock:

• 250 gms Boned Chicken
• 1 Big Onion, chopped or sliced
• 1 Tbsp Pepper corns
• 1 Carrot, chopped
• 5 Garlic, crushed
• Water, as needed

For Soup :

• 3 Tbsp Masoor dal
• 15 Spinach leaves, washed and chopped
• Salt to taste
• 1 Tsp Pepper
• Water, as needed
• 2 Tbsp Olive oil
• ¼ Boiled Chicken, cut into small strips
• Basil leaves for Garnishing

Method :

• Add all the ingredients given for preparing stock in a large vessel and add required amount of water.

• Simmer and cook it for 45 minutes.

• Meanwhile, Pressure cook the dal and spinach leaves for 4-5 whistles.

• Once cooker cools down, blend the dal and spinach to a smooth paste. Keep aside.

• Heat olive oil in a pan and add the chicken strips.

• Saute for a minute and add the pureed spinach-dal mixture.

• Remove boned chicken from the stock and blend the remaining ingredients using blender.

• Strain and extract the stock.

• Now add stock to the boiling dal-spinach mixture followed by salt and pepper and boil it for 10 minutes or till the soup consistency occurs.

• Once done, remove from the flame, garnish with basil leaves and serve hot with croutons.

Note : 

Fresh cream can also be added for extra richness.

Linking this recipe with  Lakshmi's "5 Ingredients Fix Challenge"