Soupe a la Menthe Fraiche

Day 5 of the soup diet.
I'm beginning to feel a lot better about sacrificing my evening meal to mostly vegetarian broths (maybe if that was entirely true I wouldn't refer to it as sacrifice?). When I was younger we used to have soups a lot, we didn't have that much money and my mother certainly struggled to give us anything at all sometimes. When we moved to London and food was everywhere I vowed never to eat soup again, pathetic peasant food that it was, I'd really moved up in the world. Now that I have more perspective I feel extremely guilty for being such a brat, if there is any justice in the world my children will probably do this to me.
I feel like I have to meet the Aline Benayoun more than half way in seriously calling this 'Mint Soup'. It's more of a vegetable stew, with mint. But let me tell you, after a bowl of turnip water this was some kind of a feast. Benayoun could have called this a mint souffle and I would still be happy. This is hearty, and very carb rich, but the lemon and herbs manage to lift any heaviness and make the soup taste fresh and light. The flavours are wonderful; rich, Mediterranean but with a herby African twist.

Poulet aux olives

So I got way too much food for the my birthday party (oh and booze too, by the way. But I'm not complaining about that, don't change the subject), so now I have a big ass bowl of leftover olives. My first obvious thought was eeew gross, how many people have had their ratty mits in that bowl? But I found a recipe that suggests blanching the olives to get rid of some of the salt, but will also take care of all the toxoplasma and plague or whatever.
You see, now that I have to spend all my money on stupid things like rent and the electric bill I really can't brig myself to throw food away. Maybe that's how I picked up last week's stomach bug...
Anyway, I picked up this book a couple of years ago, it's kind of a collection of family recipes from Casablanca, North Africa was colonized by France so this is fusion cuisine here. The book is replete with romantic tales of going to the market to buy a live chicken, I mean seriously, believe it or not, they didn't have supermarkets! OK here we go.
You brown the chicken pieces, then stew for an hour or something like that with most of the other ingredients and then shove in the blanched olives 20 minutes before the end and wah-lah!
Result: Aline Benayoun writes that this is the chicken dish she always loved best growing up, and that's exactly what it tastes like - a stew that someone's mother used to make for them when they were little, and they really liked it, and the memory was formed. This is quite an inelegant pan full of random ingredients, every mouthful should have a bite of meaty chicken, a still salty olive and a bland potato to help everything blend in your mouth. It's nice. Smoky from the paprika, savory and sweet, but could do with some lemon. Also, two potatoes is just not enough. Meh.