Chicken with Fresh Olives Soup

Chicken with Fresh Olives Soup

I got most of my inspiration for this soup from "Chicken and Tomato Soup with Olives and Capers" provided by James Peterson in his book, Splendid Soups: Recipes and master techniques for making the world's best soups.

Ingredients:

• chicken breast (roughly two)
• peppercorn (ground on the spot)
• 1 medium sized sweet onion, diced
• celery (I used a whole bundle of stalks that I purchased at the store), cut into small pieces
  
• 8 garlic cloves
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 4 teaspoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons saffron threads
• 1.5-2 cups chicken broth
• 1.5-2 cups water
• 2 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes
• 6-8 teaspoons small non pareil capers
• 2-3 cups fresh, pitted and chopped olives (I used black and purplish calamata olives)

NOTE: Do NOT substitute canned olives for fresh ones. Fresh olives totally make this soup.

Direction:

• In a large pot, dump the celery, tomatoes, chicken broth and water and bring to a boil.
• In a frying pan, fry the diced onion in olive oil. Once it is done, add the onion exclusively (keeping any of the onion juice and olive oil behind) to the large pot.
• With olive oil, onion juice, and perhaps a few pieces of diced onion, cook the cut chicken (I cut the chicken in to small pieces). Grind pepper over the chicken breast as it cooks. Set the chicken aside when the chicken's done done.
• In the large pot, add all the spices (cumin, paprika, saffron). Once the pot's been simmering a little while with the spices in it, add the chicken, olives, and capers. It's ready to serve!
• I served the soup over a bed of rice, but I'm a rice-aholic.
  

One final note, my husband likes this soup so much, he asked for it one year for his birthday meal, over eating out or any other meal (and he's a heavy comfort food sort of guy). This isn't a comfort food meal, but it is deliciously tasty.