I love soup. I absolutely love both cooking and eating soup. And nowadays I love making up my own recipes for soup!

A few weeks ago I was in K-market in Kamppi doing my usual daily shopping and wondering what I should cook for dinner. I was in the middle of vegetables section and I saw “Varhaiskaali”, which looked like a normal cabbage to me. Apparently it is not a regular cabbage, but it is called “Spring Green” in English. Since I am not the best cabbage person in the world either, I could not tell the difference in taste and I personally think that you could use any regular cabbage in this recipe if you cannot find spring green. But anyway, I used this one and made this soup.

 

 

I was actually planning to cook some kind of soup already for that day but the question was what kind. I knew that I wanted a few colours in the soup. So there I had, in the end, soup with spring green, spring onion, tomato, chicken and a few different kinds of spices. It was colourful enough for that day!

 

Another thing that I loved about this soup was feeling the chunky pieces of vegetables and chicken. You can taste all the ingredients one by one but you also have the general taste of the whole soup.

 

 
Of course if you are vegetarian, you can omit chicken from the recipe and even add another vegetable. I used chicken broth, but you can also use vegetable broth if you like.

 

There you go, a colourful spring soup for you!

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Ingredients:
(serves for 4)

 

2 chicken breast fillets, boiled and shredded
2 portions of noodles, cooked according to instructions on the package
2 tsp + 1 tsp olive oil
100 gr spring green (varhaiskaali in Finnish) or regular cabbage if you like, chopped
3 spring onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
50 gr mushrooms, chopped
10 gr ginger, chopped
1 medium tomato, chopped
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
paprika to taste
1 tsp soy sauce
cumin to taste
1 lt chicken broth (kanaliemi in Finnish)

 

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1. As written in the ingredients list above, first boil chicken fillets and shred into pieces. Also cook noodle according to the instructions written on the package. Put chicken and noodles aside.

 

2. Put 2 tsp olive oil in a medium pan. Add spring green and sauté in medium high heat by stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes or until the greens absorb most of the oil and start getting softer.

 

 

 

 
3. Add spring onions and garlic and continue cooking for 3 more minutes, again constantly stirring.

 

 

 

 
4. Add mushrooms and cook for 3 more minutes, the same.

 

 

 
5. Add ginger, tomato and cook for 2 more minutes.

 

 

 

 

6. Add salt, pepper, paprika, soy sauce and cumin and continue cooking for just about 1 minute, to get all spices incorporated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
7. Add chicken and just cook for 2 more minutes by stirring, to get all the flavours mixed with chicken. Take out of heat, put aside.

 

 

 
8. Take another pan to cook the final soup and pour chicken broth in it. Add remaining (1 tsp) olive oil, noodle and chicken mixture into the pan, in medium heat, stirring every now and then.

 

 

 

 
9. Once it starts boiling, lower the heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes. When it’s ready, take it out of the heat and let it sit for 5 minutes and then serve. Bon appetite!