Its Friday It Must Be Soup! Jan 20 is Turkey Rice

There has been a big batch of turkey stock that came from my New Year's Day turkey sitting in my freezer, begging to be turned into something but I didn't want to make the same turkey barley soup I always make. I also didn't want to make sopa de lima again and was throwing around ideas like turkey fois gras lemon grass bisque or a nice turkey goulash with sea urchin croutons when realized that maybe I should just make a nice, simple soup like an old fashioned chicken noodle or chicken rice type of soup. I added a can of plum tomatoes, some red rice as well as basmati and ended up with something really hearty and homey. The tomatoes turned it into something that reminded me of the  soup my mom always made so how that be a bad thing? Actually, I will admit now that the beloved soup that my mom made was her "doctored up" Lipton's chicken noodle soup. In addition to broken up spaghetti and frozen corn, she always added a big squirt of ketchup
 - I KNOW, I KNOW BUT IT'S A WARM CHILDHOOD MEMORY OKAY???

Sometimes we just try too hard, you know?

Turkey Rice Soup

6 cups  Turkey stock (or chicken stock for that matter)
glug olive oil
1 stalk celery, diced finely
1 carrot, diced finely
1 leek, sliced thinly
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 796 ml/28 oz can plum tomatoes, squished between your fingers
3 cups shredded cooked turkey (or chicken)
cooked rice (I used a mixture of asian red rice and basmati)
handful chopped fresh italian parsley
salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot and sauté the celery, carrot, leek and garlic until softened and just starting to colour a bit. Pour in the turkey stock and squish the plum tomatoes through your fingers and add those to the pot as well as any tomato juice left in the can. Bring that to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Add the turkey and the parsley and let the soup simmer away until the vegetables are tender. When the soup is finished, season with salt and pepper if needed and then you add some rice to each bowl individually before adding the soup to the rice.

Some people cook the rice right in the soup but I don't. The rice absorbs too much stock and gets all water logged so I prefer to cook the rice (or noodles if it's a noodle soup) separately and add a scoop to each bowl and then fill up the bowl with soup.