A bowl of Soup to calm a cold-cough-fever ridden cranky toddler

Chicken with Veggies & Egg Soup

A cranky toddler down with cold-cough-fever, holed up indoors for 4 long days....just needed to be perked up with something she loved....SOUP! So a bowlful of hearty wholesome soup it was.....

I did not have chicken stock...I more often than not, dont. But that hardly matters.....There's always an alternative and a pressure cooker....

So here it is...any vegetable can be used. I used the ones I had....

Ingredients
2 boneless chicken leg pieces or 1 large chicken breast - chopped into small pieces

1 Carrot cut into tiny cubes

3-4 french beans chopped into tiny pieces

A handful of corn kernels (I used frozen)

A handful of fresh peas 

1/2 Capiscum chopped 

Chopped onions - 1

5-6 cloves of garlic-sliced

fresh ginger - 1/2 inch - cut into thin strips

pepper corns-freshly crushed : 4-5
Black Pepper powder
Tej Pata - 1 or 2
Salt to taste
Butter - 1 tbsp
Sesame Oil - 1 tbsp
Eggs - 2

Got the idea to add the beaten eggs to the soup and to use sesame Oil , from Soma's Egg Drop Soup. 

Procedure :
1. In a large pressure cooker, heat butter. Add the Tej Pata, sliced ginger & garlic, crushed pepper corns and finally the chopped onions. Stir till the onions turns translucent.
2. Add the bit sized chicken pieces. Stir around on high heat till slightly browned. Add the fresh peas
3. Add 2 mugs full of water. And pressure cook till 2 whistles go off. If you have chicken stock, add only 1/2 mug of water and pressure cook the chicken and them add the chicken stock and again bring to a boil.
4. While the pressure cooking is on, heat a tawa without oil and dry roast the chopped capsicum. Dont overcook..just to remove the moistness/rawness of capsicum and to give it a smoky flavour.
5.After release of the pressure, take off the lid of the cooker, raise the heat and again bring to boil. When boiling, add all vegetables except capsicum/bell pepper and boil for a minute or less. The vegetables should retain their crunch and not turn soggy. Add the dry roasted capsicum.
6.Adjust the salt and pepper. Add a drizzle of sesame oil into the boiling soup.
7. Beat 2 eggs. Lower the heat and add the beaten eggs slowly in a thin stream while stirring (with a fork) the simmering soup in one direction as described in Soma's Egg Drop Soup. My egg ribbons/strands were not as fine and delicate as hers ..but tasted smooth and silky!

Serve Hot!!!
To see the kiddo's eyes light up with joy as she slurped the steaming bowl of soup was an immense relief after a long day of seeing her being ill and moody!