CHICKEN LIGHTSOUP

Light-soup settles lightly in the belly. With chicken and fufu it is celebration fare, otherwise with dried fish and smoked fish it becomes the convalescent's nourishment. Light-soup has a very distinctive taste when cooked with goat meat. The famous "aponkye kakra' is a staple at chop-bars, (rough and ready restaurants) for the working man, found in urban and rural settings.

Ingredients:

Chicken..whole, to be cut in pieces or Chicken Legs (broiler is best for taste but I use regular Zehr's produce)

Onion/: 2 medium

Pepper: Red Chlli peppers or Hot bell pepper

Tomatoes: 2 Large

1 small can of Tomato puree

Basil

Ginger root


I skin my chicken generally but for Chicken light-soup some fat goes a long way to make a tasty stock so I leave skin on some of the pieces.

I cut and puree one onion which I pour over the chicken pieces in my soup pot.
I add a generous pinch of salt.

I open a can of tomato puree and add the contents to the pot

and cook it over low to medium heat, lid partially covering the pot and stirring occasionally.

The stock forms around the chicken as it cooks. Add on four or five basil leaves.

When the stock becomes clear (tomato red but blood clear) then add four cups of water and put in it a whole onion, two whole tomatoes four or five whole chilli peppers according to your tolerance and a whole tomato. Cover pot and simmer.

After 15 minutes, take out cooked tomato, onion and peppers and blend them. Perhaps take one or two peppers at a time if you're not sure about your tolerance.

Add it to the broth on the stove, now cooking at low heat.

Puree the fresh ginger root and add it.

Simmer for five to ten minutes.
Taste.

Serve the lightsoup with fufu.

*I haven't cooked this in a while. The next time I cook it I will go according to my firm instructions as described here and photograph the process. We never measure anything..we judge it all with our eyes and our tongue.