Chicken Soup

[Prep Time: 5 min, Cooking Time: 1 hour passive]


What you need:
1 pack chicken bone (or substitute with thighs/drumsticks)
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic

Chicken bones may be hard to find in regular supermarkets. What is it? It's basically what's left of the chicken after they take off all the standard cuts. Usually the store throws the bones away, but if there's an Asian supermarket near where you live, you should be able to find them there. They are very well suited for chicken soup as they pack a lot of flavor and it doesn't take long for them to release those flavors. If I'm not mistaken, soup is their only use anyway, so you can't go wrong here.

If you can't find chicken bones, you can always substitute with chicken thighs/drumsticks. You'll want to boil the soup a bit longer in this case.

For my soup, I add a whole onion and a couple cloves of garlic for extra kick. There's a lot of flexibility here to make a more hearty soup. Some ingredients that go well: potatoes, carrots, celery, and rice. Experiment!

Tuna and White Bean Pasta

[Prep Time: 0 min, Cooking Time: 15 min]


What you need:
1 box pasta
1 can white beans
1 can tuna
2-3 tablespoons of pesto sauce

You can buy pre-made pesto sauce from the supermarket. Mix several tablespoons of it into cooked pasta, while the pasta is still hot.

Tuna goes into the pasta next. Canned tuna in olive oil is perfect, as the mixture will taste better with some olive oil. If the tuna is the chunky kind, break it down in a bowl first.

Beans go in last. The mixture will become quite thick due to all the extra starch. Don't mix too much as canned beans can easily go all mushy on you.

As for pasta type, any kind will do. Since the tuna and beans are quite chunky, I find that the big tubular pasta works best (Mezzani Rigati).