Well, what else would you call a minestrone-type soup, but one that contains chicken? It's just got to be Chickarone!

This soup recipe evolved from the BBC Good Food recipe for their Hearty Pasta Soup. I'd been intending to make some of that - on and off - for months now. Twice (at least) I've put it on the menu plan for the week, only to have it bounced off in favour of some other plan. The last time I included it, I bought the filled pasta and it got bounced off the menu list, so I ate the pasta for lunch over the weekend.

Then I (pretty much) gave up on trying to make it.

So when I was considering what leftovers we'd got that needed using up and began to contemplate how I could use two chicken breasts without having to buy any more meat to go with them, the Pasta Soup reared its poor old rejected head.

I had a secret theory that the reason why I'd never made the soup was because of the filled pasta. I know that some members of the family aren't terribly keen on filled pasta as they - quite rightly, in lots of cases - say that it's bland and flavourless. However, what if I used just ordinary small pasta (unfilled) and put some diced chicken breast in the soup? That might make it a bit more interesting.

So that was how the idea first occurred. The recipe, however, sort of grew in the making.

I was nervous about the degree of flavour that could be achieved by the inclusion of just vegetable stock and a tin of tomatoes, knowing how my family likes to have big flavours in their food and aren't keen on "broth" style soups. It was obvious that as the chicken stewed and the vegetables cooked, the soup base would develop in flavour - but I just helped it along a little bit with the addition of two heaped teaspoonfuls of tomato puree and some mushroom ketchup. I'd also made the addition of a stick of celery, a chopped leek, a tin of sweetcorn niblets, some fine green beans and, just before the end, stirred some green pesto through the soup. (Which took care of the last of the pesto!).

I was surprised by how much salt the soup ate up, too. Because the vegetable bouillon I used was low salt, I suspect that had as much to do with it as anything - although the use of spaghetti demands a good dose of salt, in order to bring out the flavour. My anxiety over the soup base was put to rest by the starch from the spaghetti helping to thicken the base. Ultimately, the soup came together just perfectly - and I felt was pretty well balanced as I could almost taste all the individual components. The chicken was there in texture and visible, but lost out a little in flavour. I suspect what I should have done, was use chicken stock instead of vegetable, which would have helped the chicken along a little. Hubby felt that the broccoli stamped all over the other flavours and for him, the prevalent flavour was broccoli. Son and heir ate all his soup without comment, so I guess he liked it!

I served the soup with some Cheesy Pesto Pitta dippers, which were Pitta bread spread with pesto, then cut into four pieces and laid onto a baking tray. Grate a liberal coating of cheddar cheese over them and place into a hot oven for 10-20 minutes to crisp and heat through. The pesto was a great addition to these dippers - and one that I'll certainly do again. To be honest, you could whip up a plate of these if you're planning on watching a film at home, or have friends around for drinks. Perfect!

Speaking of cheesy nibbles - as often happens whenever I indulge in making my own pastry, I wind up with a good quantity left over. Which is exactly what happened when I made a steak & kidney pie for the weekend. The thing was, though, what to do with it?

This question was very quickly solved by the resident Chief Dustbin (a.k.a. son & heir) who, now he has ventured into teenager-land, is rapidly swallowing up every edible substance in the place.

Upon first sight of the plateful of steak & kidney pie, he whistled appreciatively and said "hello, old friend!" to the pastry top. So, when I mooted the question of what to do with the leftovers, he quickly suggested that I just stamp out biscuit shapes, bake them and give them to him to take to school for a break time snack.

Well, it was an idea. ~shrug~ Not quite so healthy as a pot of melon pieces or an apple, but what the heck - it'd make a nice change for him.

So I got to thinking that there was probably more I could do with the pastry to make it even yummier for him - and hit upon the idea of adding cheese.

Hubby reminded me of the technique where you grate uncooked pastry into a bowl and add grated cheese, then bring the whole lot back together as a dough again. So that's what I did - adding some fresh chives and a leetle bit of cayenne along the way.

I gave each "biscuit" a milk wash and sprinkled them with a little sea salt, then popped them in the oven.

The 10 minutes I'd spent grating, was worth every second. The little cheesy biscuits that came out of the oven were delightful. For me, they probably could have used a little Parmesan and maybe a bit of English mustard powder in the mix - but for son & heir they were manna from heaven.

So he took 5 to school - gave half of one to his best buddy, who (apparently) did a little dance of appreciation, he liked them so much! Aaah, it's nice to make a couple of teenagers happy - and all for the price of a little cheese, some chives, some time and a bit of electricity!