Chicken and Chickpea Soup

Ok folks, this is heavily adapted from Simply in Season.

I started with a 3 lb stewing chicken, the one left from last week’s farm pickup. At about 7 AM this morning I put it, along with 9 cups of water, an onion cut in wedges, 2 peeled whole cloves of garlic, 1 stick of cinnamon, 1 tsp whole cardamom pods, and 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg in the crockpot and set it to low.

When I came home from work around 6:30 PM, I went to remove the chicken so I could then strain to remove the whole spices and “push cooked garlic and onion through sieve into the broth.” Well, the chicken fell apart so there went that idea. I decided to improvise, and put another soup pot on the stove, used a large colander, and dumped the contents of the crock pot into it. When I removed the colander, all the spices and chicken came with it. I set it aside to deal with later.

Then I remembered that I needed to start the rice. I had originally intended to make Butternut Sage Orzo tonight, but it was a hectic day and I was starving. The first day of work after being off for three weeks . . . yeah. I took the easy route and dumped some basmati rice in the rice cooker. DH said my readers would be disappointed that I didn’t make the orzo . . . I said how would my readers know I was going to make orzo tonight with the soup? He didn’t have a good answer so I suspect that HE was the disappointed one, although I hadn’t told him what we were having with the soup either.

Then, I dug out the cutting board and added 2 C of peeled, diced butternut squash (from Arizona, the ones I got from my Dad finally succumbed to mold in our garage. But hey, I had the choice of either the Arizona ones or the Mexico ones at the store tonight), 2 C (1 can) cooked chickpeas, 1 large diced potato (OK, it was actually a small purple one and a medium red one that were sitting on the counter from some other project), 3 C tomatoes (well, actually a can of diced), and 1 T ground turmeric. It was supposed to simmer for 20 minutes, so in the  meantime I picked the chicken and onion pieces out of the colander and put them in the soup pot. I decided not to try to squish the onion through, since I do like chunks of onion. I couldn’t believe how tender the chicken was, even the neck came off! And I have never been able to get meat off the neck before.

The verdict: I loved the flavor, but it could have used a lot more garlic.

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