This is spring vegetable chicken soup.
I've got my big ole soup pot getting nice and hot
and I'm going to quick tender crisp saute some spring leeks
and some thin asparagus
and we're gonna season that with salt and pepper
to get the ball rolling in there.
Now, what I've already done on the stove top
is toast two things.
I toasted some nuts, a combo of cashews and pine nuts.
I also toasted the pasta for this dish.
The pasta is rice shaped pasta called orzo.
I've toasted up the orzo until it's deep, deep brown.
Now, it looks like a brown grain, doesn't it?
It's just orzo.
You let it get nice and nutty.
It makes it more fragrant
and it really makes it stand up in the soup
and get a little attention
rather than just some buttery egg noodles.
You can use any pasta in the soup you like
or you can substitute some diced potato if you prefer.
Now, once we get this cooked out a little bit,
we're going to grate in some garlic here
but if you're making the pesto, you don't need to
'cause I put a little garlic in that.
We're going to add, where's our peas?
Where are you, peas?
Oh, there you are, you were hiding.
We're gonna add in some fresh shelled peas, some white wine.
I know, it's so easy.
And immediately, we're just gonna put in
our chicken bone broth or chicken stock
and then we're gonna bring this up to a quick boil.
It'll only take a couple minutes.
As soon as your spring vegetable soup comes up to a boil,
we add our toasted orzo and as little or as much
of a rotisserie or poached chicken as you like.
I'm gonna throw in about three cups.
I love rotisserie chickens
and I love to cook obviously, right,
and there are several days of week
where I cook ahead for the week
but I still love the convenience of a rotisserie chicken
'cause I can do so much with it.
So we throw our chicken and our orzo in
and we bring it back up to a boil
and let the orzo cook about six minutes till it's al dente.
Take the soup off and add lemon zest and juice
or we're gonna stir in a pesto
that has a lot of lemon flavor in it.
So same deal.
Now that's delicious by itself
and you can use just a spoonful of store-bought pesto
of any variety to finish the soup.
If you want to make the fresh pesto, this one is delicious
and you can make a double batch.
It defrosts very quickly and you can keep it in the freezer.
So I start out with a fat handful each
of cashews and pine nuts
toasted to develop their flavor, right?
My herb combination for this I love, basil, okay,
our basil tops and licoricey tarragon,
a small handful of mint leaves
and a big handful of grassy, citrusy flat-leaf parsley.
Now, if I were making traditional basil pesto
or a pesto that I really want it to be super vibrant,
here we're stirring it into hot soup,
if you're just tossing it with hot pasta,
I would take the extra step of blanching it.
A few seconds in and out of salted boiling water
and then into an ice bath.
It makes the color even brighter
and it gives it a really rich bang for your buck
when it comes to the flavor.
In this case, I'm gonna stir it into the soup.
I've taken kind of a shortcut here.
A little bit of crushed red pepper flake.
Lemon zest and juice.
Then we're going to grate in some garlic.
Sometimes the food processor can miss a chunk
so I like to take a couple extra seconds
and grate it on the zester side of my handheld grater here
so that we know we are pasting the garlic
as it's being added to the bowl
then you know the drill now, right?
A little cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano.
A pinch of salt.
Turn the sucker, well, pulse it first to get it going
then turn the sucker on and stream in your olive oil
until it pulls away from the side.
This is spring vegetable chicken soup
with asparagus, leeks, fresh peas.
I mean, it's glorious just like this
'cause it's got toasted pasta running all trough it,
the toasted orzo and the chicken
but what makes this really special
is we add that mixed herb cashew pesto to the soup
and stir that in at the table and I'm telling you
you will pass out but not from a cold.
(applause)