Chicken Tortilla Soup

A few weeks ago I made a pot of Chicken Tortilla Soup for my friend Anna from Brown's Boot Camp. Anna had moved out into her own apartment and the soup was a housewarming gift. Anyway, she and her roommate liked the soup and asked for the recipe. So, here's the recipe for 4-5 servings:

• 1 onion chopped
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 (28oz) can crushed tomatoes
• 1 (7.75oz) can of El Pato Mexican Tomato Sauce
• 1 (10.5oz) can chicken broth
• 1.25 cups water
• 1 cup cooked whole corn kernels (Trader Joe's)
• 1 cup white hominy
• 1 (4oz) can chopped green chili peppers
• 1 (15 oz) can black beans rinsed and drained
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 boneless chicken breast halves (cooked and cut into bite sized pieces)
• crushed tortilla chips, sliced avocado
• shredded Jack cheese, chopped green onion
  

1. In a medium stock pot, heat oil over medium heat and saute the onions for 10-15 minutes until tender. Add garlic and saute an additional 2 minutes.
2. Stir in the chili powder, oregano, tomatoes, El Pato, broth and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Stir in the corn, hominy, chills, beans, cilantro and chicken. Simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Serve soup in bowls topped with tortilla chips, cheese, avocado and green onions.

When I make a large pot like the one from one of my crock pots I do two things differently 1) I double everything and 2) For the chicken and broth I use a whole chicken boiled in a stock pot large enough to hold the whole chicken and enough water to cover the chicken with water plus another inch over the bird. To the pot I add a couple of bay leaves, a tablespoon of dried basil, a tablespoon of dried oregano, salt and pepper. I boil the chicken for 40 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot and put it aside on a plate or platter to cool. Use the broth as the soup broth in step 2 above but double the quantity. When the chicken has cooled enough to work with begin pulling the legs, thighs and wings off the bird. This should be pretty easy since it is fully cooked. Remove all the skin and discard. Debone the chicken by pulling all the meat from the bones. You can either leave the meat in larger pieces or dice smaller, I prefer larger pieces. Presto, you have your chicken called for in step 3 above.

2 Soups, Mixed Success

I'm finding it interesting trying to analyze people's feedback on the soups. Take this evening for instance, as I mentioned in the last post I made two soups for a pool party potluck of about 30 people. One was Potato & Swiss Cheese and the other was Jalapeno & Cilantro.

Personally, the Potato and Swiss Cheese was okay. The Swiss cheese didn't melt into a nice creamy consistency, it clumped and was more chewy than I would have liked. The soup tasted fine but I couldn't get over the Swiss cheese and that ruined it for me. Based on the lack of compliments from the folks at the party and the amount of soup left over I'm guessing my opinion was shared.

The Jalapeno & Cilantro was really good, even though I forgot to bring the cilantro to toss in before serving! So, the better soup was missing a key ingredient but I did get several compliments on the Jalapeno & Cilantro. There was soup left over but not as much as the Potato & Swiss Cheese.

My opening comment about trying to figure out people's reactions to the soups has to do with getting criticism from friends about the soups. Will friends give honest criticism of a soup if it is not good? Are there comments and critiques that I'm missing out on because people are reluctant to hurt my feelings when I'm bringing soup to work or to a party?

Two Soups For A Pool Party

The fitness boot camp (BrownsBootCamp.com) my son Tommy and I have been attending for the last 14 months is having a pool party tomorrow to celebrate the completion of August's classes. I'm bringing two soups for the crowd. One is Jalapeno & Cilantro and the other is Potato & Swiss Cheese. I found these recipes while Googling for Sweet Tomatoes/SoupPlantation soup recipes. Naturally, with my short attention span and the nature of roaming the internet I never finished looking for the recipe I started out looking for but came across a nice recipe site called CopyKat.com, check it out. Lots of recipes not just soup.

So, this pool party will be my first foray into a larger offering of my soups. I've got a long term plan for doing something serious with my soups but I'm not quite ready to share my ideas with a larger audience yet. One of the steps in my plan is to move into providing soups to small parties and gatherings first. I provide the soup and bread you provide the wine and other beverages for an informal get together. Anyway, I wish I had some business cards ready to go but I'm not quite there yet. I'll go with my usual table tent of ingredients, name and I'll put my blog URL on there for the first time.

The Jalapeno & Cilantro looks pretty easy to prepare. Saute diced jalapenos and Spanish onion. Add a diced avocado and 16 oz. of diced tomatoes and their juice. Bring that mixture to a boil. Add 8 cups of cream, salt, black pepper & white pepper to taste and 1/2 teaspoon finely diced garlic. Reduce over a happy simmer by 25 percent. This yields about 8 cups. Adjust seasonings and add 1/2 bunch of chopped cilantro. Note on the garlic: I've mentioned before that I take a shortcut with the chopped garlic. I use already chopped garlic I find in our grocery's produce section. The brand I like best is Spice World minced garlic. Between peeling all the garlic cloves and then chopping enough for some of the recipes I make this is a real time and effort saver.

The Potato & Swiss Cheese looks even easier than the Jalapeno & Cilantro soup. Start off with 64 oz. of chicken broth, 2 pounds of yukon gold potatoes sliced thin (unpeeled) and 1 yellow onion sliced thin. Cook those 3 ingredients on medium for about 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add 1 quart of cream, 1 cup of shredded swiss cheese, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup of real bacon bits and 2 tablespoons of diced green onions and simmer for 20 minutes. The recipe didn't state how many servings you get from this but I'm guessing about 8. For grated Parmesan cheese I go for Trader Joe's brand. Their Parmesan-Romano mix is my favorite.

Well off to do some shopping for these two soups.

Spicy Zucchini Soup

This week's soup uses several ingredients from our very own backyard garden!

I got the recipe from SimplyRecipes.com which is one of my favorite sites for recipes. They have an email alert of new daily postings of recipes which is about the only such alert that I like.

This is a pretty straightforward recipe. You start off sauteing, in 4 tablespoons of olive oil, a whole onion that is chopped and one half of a jalapeno chili. You remove the stem, seeds and ribs from the jalapeno before cooking. I've learned the hard way that when you work with chilis using rubber gloves is a great idea! Even if you're very careful about not touching your eyes or nose the chilis still can leave a burning sensation on your hands for hours even after repeated washing.

Back to the sauteing. You saute until the onions are translucent not browned, about 4-5 minutes. To the onion and chilis add 5-6 cups of chopped zucchini. If the zucchinis you use are very large ones you'll need to peel and remove the seeds before chopping. This was the case with one of the zucchinis I used from our garden. If you use smaller zucchinis your can leave the skin and seeds. Along with the zucchini add 3 chopped garlic cloves. Saute for another 8-10 minutes stirring often. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. When you add the zucchini it may seem that you need a larger pot but the zucchini will cook down some so you're likely going to be fine with the pot you started with.

Add 1.5 cups of chopped sourdough bread. If you get a chance to leave a few slices of bread out all day to dry a bit that's great. If you are not able to do that then simply toast the slices lightly to get a dry texture to the bread. Along with the bread add 3 cups of chicken or vegetable broth (vegetable broth makes this soup completely vegetarian) and 1 cup of water. Bring the ingredients to a simmer, reduce heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Turn off the heat. Add 1/2 cup of loosely packed chopped mint leaves, 1/2 cup of cilantro loosely packed and chopped. Puree the mixture in a blender or food processor and return to the pot. But the best way to puree is with an immersion blender. If you don't have one and make soups on a regular basis then an immersion blender is a must. Bertie gave me one for my birthday last April and I love it. The one I have is powerful and has attachments like a little food processor, whisker and smoothie maker. It is made by Cuisinart here's a link to Amazon for my model http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-CSB-77-Blender-Chopper-Attachments/dp/B0006G3JRO/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1282743363&sr=1-19.

After returning the soup to the pot add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, add salt and pepper to taste.

After finishing the soup last night I found it was missing something that I couldn't put my finger on. Usually when this occurs I add some lemon juice to give it a little tang but it already had plenty of lemon juice. I did add more salt but I have to be careful with salt because I love salt and can easily over salt for most people's tastes. Another couple of tastes and the soup still wasn't quite there. I added a couple of pinches of white pepper and that helped but still not quite there. Note: be very judicious with white pepper because a little goes a very long way. I was thinking about some fresh basil and/or some cream. I decided to sleep on it and after warming up the soup in the morning went with about 3/4 cup of cream. This addition got it closer but I'm still not fully satisfied but we'll wait to get my co-workers' opinions.

So, the fresh ingredients from Patterson Farms were the zucchini, mint and jalapeno. If I had used basil that would have come from our garden also. I'll include some pics of our garden boxes in a later posting. We had a great summer of vegetables this year. Tomatoes, tomatillos, chilis, eggplants, mint, thyme, basil and rosemary.

Off to work and Soup at Work Wednesday.

Thai Chicken & Pumpkin Soup

I got this week's recipe from a co-worker. It sounds interesting.

Chicken, onions, garlic, ginger, celery, carrots, mango nectar, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, cilantro, cream, canned pumpkin and cornstarch. I couldn't find two of the ingredients yesterday at my usual grocery store, Fry's. Mango nectar and the canned pumpkin. Lots of other nectars out there but not mango. The pumpkin was an unexpected hard-to-find. Nothing in the canned fruit aisle, canned vegetable aisle, baking aisle with other pie fillings. I even broke down and asked one of the customer service people as I made my way to the checkstand. This lady looked at me like I was wearing a Santa outfit in August. "Why we haven't had pumpkin filling since the day before Thanksgiving!". OK then.

So I'll be checking Sprouts, Sunflower and Safeway for those two items.

On an unrelated topic, my wife Bertie had arthroscopic knee surgery last Friday the 13th, her idea on the date. She had a torn meniscus repaired. She's doing real well and now walking without her crutches most of the time. She's pretty tough and very independent. It's nice to see her doing so well. She's my sweetheart.

Chorizo, Kale & Cranberry Bean

This week's Wednesday Soup slipped to Thursday. I spent Tuesday evening installing a new garbage disposal and didn't have time for soup making.

This week's soup is a Bobby Flay recipe. What caught my eye was the Cranberry Beans. I had never heard of Cranberry Beans before so a quick look on Google and found that they are also called borlotti or shell beans in New England. They have a nutty flavor. A cool answer reference I found is wisegeek.com. I had to call a couple of stores here in the Tucson area to find them but was successful at Sunflower Market.

It was very easy to make with simple ingredients. I used beef chorizo that was loose as opposed to being in a sausage tube. White and red onions, carrots and celery sauteed in a couple of tablespoons of the chorizo fat. The chorizo I bought didn't have enough fat so I added olive oil to the pot. The kale gets added to the sauteed veggies and cooked until wilted. Some white wine and chicken stock are added and then simmered. The beans and cooked chorizo are added and cooked until the beans and kale are soft.

We'll see what the crowd has to say tomorrow.

The kitchen toy tip this time is what I call a scooper but what is called in the "trade" a prep taxi. At least that's what Food Network's site calls them. I use it to scoop up diced veggies to put into pots or bowls. You can do in one scooop what might take two or three tries just using your hands. Here's a link to the Food Network site with the prep taxis http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/ProductList.aspx?Ntt=prep+taxi&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchall&Nty=1&N=0&Ntk=All

Chinese Dumpling

We decided on Chinese Dumpling soup for tomorrow's offering. By we I mean my friend Shannon and I. It was a simple soup to make but has the complex flavors of Chinese foods.

Since I went Asian it meant a stop at the Lee Lee Asian Market on the corner of Orange Grove and La Cholla. I have not been in too many international markets so I don't have much to compare but Lee Lee has unusual stuff compared to your standard American grocery stores. If you've ever been to Lee Lee and noticed an unusual odor to the place you are not alone. Anyway, I got some Chinese dumplings, dried oyster mushrooms, sesame oil, rice cooking wine and Asian chili sauce. The people working there are very helpful especially with ingredients that I'm not familiar with.

The other ingredients are chicken broth, fresh ginger, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt, carrots, scallions, baby spinach and cilantro.

If you've ever used sesame oil before you know that a little bit goes a very long way and the taste can be very overwhelming. I learned this the hard way a couple of years ago when I made some won tons. Too much sesame oil and the darn things were inedible, a large waste of time because won tons are pretty labor intensive.

I'll follow up tomorrow with the outcome of the Chinese Dumpling Soup and I'll expound a bit on knives and how I came to gain some experience with them.