Tasty Tuesday Here again folks. Today we shall be making a special chicken soup with a recipe donated by my chef friend T.C, the guy who has helped me in all of my recipes so far apart from the Chilli Chicken, that one I did myself!

His only caveat with sharing this new recipe was insisting that this soup be named after him, so in order to comply with his requirements before sharing, today I shall be showing you all how to make T.C’s Awesome Chicken Barley Soup.

It is an incredibly easy dish to make with the only real difficulty coming from bagging the spices into some muslin cloth! It is tasty, healthy and above doesn’t cost the earth so is excellent value for money.

So here is Tasty Tuesday’s second ever recipe.

T.C’s Awesome Chicken Barley Soup

Ingredients:

1. 2 Chicken Breasts 350gms
2. Pearl Barley 100gms
3. 2 Carrots
4. 1 Large Leek
5. 3 Celery Sticks
6. White Wine Vinegar
7. Truffle Oil (To Taste and only if wanted)
8. Olive Oil 1 Tablespoon
9. 1 Bunch Parsley
10. Bouquet de Garni – Star Anise, Cloves, Garlic, Peppercorns,Bayleaf and Cinnamon

Instructions

First off, we need to get the Bouquet de Garni sorted out so take your piece of cloth (a pair of old pants in my case… 😉 ) and place the contents in the centre allowing you to make a small parcel.

Tie parcel off with some string

Top and tail the leak and slice into small pieces

Take the celery and do like wise

Then finally peel the carrots, top and tail them and then chop into small pieces

Place the oil in a  large saucepan and start to heat, when warm add the leek first of all and then place the lid on the saucepan to start the sweating process.

Once sweated down, take the carrots and celery and add into the pan

Then stir in with the leek and replace the lid to continue cooking. For those of you that are interested, this is known as a Mirepoix (a mixture of the three veggies that are sweated down) Just in case you were wondering…!

Take the chicken stock and mix with 1 litre of hot water

Next chop the parsley and the chicken in preparation to be added toward the end.

Once all the veggies have sweated down and are almost cooked, add the pearl barley to the mixture

Followed by the 1 litre of chicken stock

Finally add the Bouquet de Garni, replace the lid and leave to simmer until the pearl barley has softened. Should really take about 35 minutes for this to happen at a low heat.

Once cooked, remove the Bouquet de Garni once more

Then once the soup is free from any foreign bodies, add the diced chicken and parsley at the end, bring back to the boil and let simmer for 10 more minutes thoroughly cooking the chicken through.

Lastly, once the chicken is cooked through add a small splash (just over a teaspoon to be honest) of the white wine vinegar and serve.

Eh Voila! T.C’s Awesome Chicken and Barley soup

Add a fine drizzle of truffle oil as I said but that is down to personal taste. The soup makes a very refreshing, super filling and extremely tasty dish that is both nutritious and healthy.

Take the left overs and put into storage and refrigerate. Simples.

So, that’s another healthy, easy to make recipe added to the collection. Maybe you could let me know what you think in the comments 😉

FOOD DIARY: Sunday 24th May 2015

	Qty	Measure	Food	Calories (gr)	Protein (gr)	Carbs (gr)	Fat (gr)
Breakfast	2	Large Egg	Eggs Scrambled	182	12	2	10
	1	50gms	Smoked Salmon	118	13	4	5
Total (gr)
Lunch	1	Small Bowl	Hot Thai Prawn Noodles	130	22	27	0.3
Total (gr)
Dinner	2	50gms	Slices Of Toast	230	9	44	2
Total (gr)
Snacks	1	600mls	Tea	28	0	6	0
	1	400mls	Americano	36	2	0	0
Total (gr)
Water	1	500mls	Mineral Water	0	0	0	0

Yesterday, although I still walked and went to the gym, to be honest I was a little worn out after four consecutive days of exercise, my last rest day being Thursday of last week.

The gym session looked as ever like this:

1. 3 x 15 Reps 30kg Abductor machine
2. 3 x 15 Reps 30kg Adductor machine
3. 3 x 15 Reps 30kg Abdominal Crunch machine
4. 3 x 15 Reps 30kg Lower Back machine
5. 3 x 15 Reps 20kg Cable Row
6. 3 x 15 Reps 10kg Shoulder Press
7. 3 x 15 Reps 30Kg Chest Press
8. 3 x 15 Reps 30Kg Pec Deck
9. 3 x 15 Reps 20Kg Tricep Pull Down
10. 3 x 15 Reps 5kg (each arm) Bicep Dumbell Curl
11. 3 x 20 Standing Oblique Bar Twists

But the surprise of the day was the Jawbone reading was up a little on yesterday which was quite amazing as my legs were very tired. Mind you we could put the extra steps down to the fact there were things that had to be gotten on with added to the fact that I did the same walk as the day before, I went to the gym, the supermarket and finally walked over to the pub for a mineral water – and it WAS a mineral water!!

First thing in the morning when I collected Archie I found him fully recovered from his walk the day before, full of beans and ready for his walk again so we set off at about 8.30 as I needed to be back for 10am to meet T.C so we could go through this recipe which although easy, did take a little longer to cook because of the Pearl Barley that was added. After that was finally squared away and I had done yet another favour for a pal I headed to the gym and even though I didn’t feel like it, I still smashed the session out. Go WBFM!

After that it was a quick bite to eat (of course it was something we had prepared earlier, T.C’s Awesome Chicken Barley Soup…..) a shower and scrub up as I needed to record this weeks You Tube video. Once I had gotten my recording in the bag I finally was able to get to the last task of the day, getting the final 1000 or so words of my novel “down on paper” in order to show it to someone to see if it had legs before I wasted any more effort on a dead duck!

At last, the bank holiday was mine! I was able to be indulged, relax, watch some football and have a nice refreshing glass of cold water with cordial over the local. Oh I’m living the dream here…!

Jawbone reading was like this:

As for today? Well I am looking forward to my rest day (no walks or gym) today and shall spend it relaxing as I meet with a friend I have only met through this blog! Amazing to think that someone who started following this mess of words from France all those months ago still reads it to this day, but more amazing is the fact that she is currently staying with her family in a village about 2 miles up the road from where I live!

Such a small world.

‘Till tomorrow,

Stay out of the fridge.

P.S Episode 4 of the WBFM Channel on You Tube is here. Please watch and give me any feedback you may have and also let me know if I have improved any!!