Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup, Simplified Soup and Jam

My Mum isn’t well. She has overdone things for not the first time. After pulling out sliding wardrobe doors to put some new shelves inside, an annoying pain developed in her hip. Just to confuse matters, some blisters developed on her left foot which happened to be the same side as her hip pain. Perhaps something had bitten her on the foot while she was outside. As a result her foot was throbbing. She was able to move around her home on a pair of crutches, but even then her speed was snail’s pace.

In the past similar problems with her back have been easily fixed by her chiropractor. But after getting an all clear from a back x-ray and as the pain became unbearable, she finally agreed to visit the doctor. After a brief examination the diagnosis was shingles in her foot with referred pain moving up to her hip. Unfortunately the diagnosis came long after the 72 hour time frame within which anti-viral medications can be taken to help clear up the disease.

So my Mum went into hospital for just over a week and has now returned home. While she’s a little more mobile than she was, she is still dealing with the pain – particularly just after she’s been on her feet too long. She’s starting to hear this as a message to slow down.

One way I can help my Mum is to provide some meals and fortunately I have the Thermomix to help me. So I trolled through my recipe books and some blogs that I often visit and found the perfect comfort food – Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup a la Thermomixer.

This time around I have been very obedient and made it according to the recipe, well, with just one variation. I’ve made a note to self to not add any additional salt as I have used Thermomix Stock Concentrate with its strong salt content in lieu of the chicken stock. This soup tasted delicious, in fact enough for me to chow down a second small helping, and I’m sure my Mum will like it as well.

But I had a remaining dilemma. Last week I made some soup which Mum really enjoyed. I modified the pumpkin soup recipe from the everyday cookbook by replacing carrot with potato.

When she heard that I had some cabbage she decided that next she’d like some cabbage soup. So again I trolled through the books and blogs and found a recipe in the "Taste of Life" book by Julie Stafford for a cabbage casserole. Since I still wanted to make a soup, I borrowed the main ingredients of cabbage, onion, apples and potatoes and used them in a simplified version of the pumpkin soup recipe.

Simplified Soup Recipe Ingredients:
700g preferred vegies/fruit peeled and chopped ie cabbage, potatoes, apples
1 onion peeled and chopped
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tbsp stock concentrate (full tbsp of concentrate makes the soup too salty for me)
500g water
pinch of sugar

Instructions:
Add onion and vegies/fruit into Thermomix and chop for 15 seconds on speed 7.
Add oil, stock concentrate, water and sugar and cook for 20 minutes at 100 degrees C on speed 1.
Blend the mix for 15 to 20 seconds by increasing slowly from speed 1 to 9.

The resulting soup was an unusual consistency and equally unusual but very appealing taste. My Mum says she has made cabbage soup in the past so it will be interesting to hear her comments after she has tried it.

I’m going to keep trying different ingredients using this simple soup recipe. I have a feeling that when the different vegetables or fruits complement each other then the soup will work, which is why I borrowed this cabbage combination from an existing recipe.

I also use a similarly simplified jam recipe which has produced tomato, apple and now peach jam. To be honest, what I make is probably more like a sauce than a jam as I’m not concerned about whether the jam has set. I tend to put it onto my salads or waffles when I make them, so the consistency isn’t a major issue.

Simplified Jam Recipe Ingredients:
Equal quantities peeled/deseeded fruit and sugar

Instructions:
Weigh the fruit as it is placed into the Thermomix.
Puree the fruit for 30 seconds on speed 7.
After scraping down the sides, add an equal weight of sugar and then blend the mix for 10 seconds on speed 7.
Cook the mix for 40 minutes at 100 degrees C on speed soft.

After it has cooled, the jam goes into the freezer. Because I have used equal quantities of fruit and sugar I can take spoonfuls out of the container straight out of the freezer. So I never have any concerns about the jam going mouldy.

Making jam like this might not be to everyone’s liking, but it certainly works for me.