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.

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.

Roasted Eggplant, Oregano, Basil & Tomato Soup

Last Wednesday's Soup came to be because we harvested a bunch of eggplants, tomatoes, and basil from our two 4'x8' garden boxes the previous weekend. The first thing I did was Google those ingredients and the word "Soup" to see what came up. Several candidates surfaced and I chose one from netcooks.com.

The one I chose was submitted to netcooks.com by Kevin Milstein from Australia. It was a little difficult to follow and lacked a few details but then I'm pretty detail oriented and like having everything spelled out even though I often stray far from a recipe's prescribed path. The title of my chosen recipe is "Roasted Eggplant, Oregano, and Tomato Soup" if you look for it on netcooks.com.

One thing about this recipe that had me a bit puzzled was whether to peel the eggplant or leave it unpeeled. My experience with eating eggplant was either in eggplant parmigiana or breaded and fried. I recall the peel being there but not consuming it. I checked a couple of other recipes calling for eggplant and peeling was called for so that's what I did. The recipe calls for:

Diced Eggplant
Fresh Oregano
Orzo
Onion
Garlic
Celery
Tomatoes
Fresh Basil
Vegetable Stock
Potato
Olive Oil

As I mentioned, from our garden I had enough eggplant, basil and tomatoes. In our pantry and fridge I had the olive oil, orzo, onion (I had a bunch of shallots left over from a previous misreading of recipe ingredients so I used them in addition to some red onion), garlic (I use the prepared minced garlic in a jar from Spice World you find in the produce section. This is a shortcut I'm willing to take because of the amount of garlic we use), celery and potato. I needed to buy the oregano (I've not had good luck growing oregano) and vegetable stock.

The potato acts as a thickening agent in addition to flavor. This precludes the need for butter or cream. I'm not against butter or cream in any way but this is a soup that doesn't need them.

Peel the eggplants and dice into 1/2 to 3/4 inch pieces. Salt them really well and set aside in a colander for 30 minutes.

The recipe calls for cooking the orzo early in the preparation. I found this to be a mistake because by the time I needed to add the orzo I ended up with a clump of pasta. So, wait until the soup is done and then cook the orzo, it doesn't take but a few minutes.

Spread the eggplant in a single layer on a large pizza pan or as many casserole dishes you need. Sprinkle with olive oil. Roast in the oven at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes and then sprinkle the chopped oregano over the eggplant and roast for an additional 10 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

Saute the onions, garlic and celery until onion is translucent, about 7 minutes. Add the diced tomatoes and stir to mix all the veggies thoroughly. Add the sliced basil leaves, stock, grated potato and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer 20-25 minutes.

This is where I screwed up so pay attention. I didn't read the recipe well enough or enough times so what I did was add the roasted eggplant/oregano into the pot after the simmering was done.

The recipe calls for pureeing the soup at this point. I was just about to bury my immersion blender in the soup pot and hit the button when something didn't feel right and I read the recipe one more time. What it calls for is to puree the cooked soup sans eggplant/oregano and then add the eggplant/oregano. So what I had to do was pick out as much of the eggplant as I could or had patience to do before pureeing. While I'm talking about pureeing let me recommend as strongly as possible that a gotta-have kitchen toy is an immersion blender, especially if you make soups. My wife, Bertie, gave me one for my last birthday and it is the best thing ever. No more making messes and losing precious spoonfuls of soup on the counter as you transfer from pot to blender.

After pureeing add the eggplant/oregano mixture and orzo. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

As I noted in a previous posting I often use fresh squeezed lemon juice to many recipes if the taste calls for a little tang or bite. That's what I did with this soup. I used the juice of one lemon. Another kitchen toy that is a must is a lemon juicer. I use the one that you place half a lemon in with the sliced end down and bring the anvil portion of the squeezer down and it basically turns the citrus inside out as it squeezes. They are pretty common in good stores and I just happened to pick mine up at Cost Plus World Market.

The folks at work liked the soup and several people commented that they were not big fans of eggplant as a rule but really like this soup.

I haven't looked at what soup is up for next week but will be looking this weekend.

Wednesday Soup At Work

So, how did Wednesday Soup At Work get started?

Over the holidays last year I read an article about finding new ways to find joy in going to work. In a roundabout way this got me to thinking about an article in Sunset magazine a couple of years ago about a woman in Berkeley that started a neighborhood soup night once a month. She hosted her neighbors with several pots of soup on the first Tuesday of every month. She gave her neighborhood an open invitation, no RSVP required. They could bring bread and beverages, she would provide the soup. It was very casual and a big success.

I tried this in my neighborhood and it failed miserably. So now back to the future, I thought about bringing soup to work on a regular basis. I love everything associated with cooking and I seem to gravitate toward soups. Looking for recipes, shopping, prepping, cooking, keeping the kitchen clean while I'm cooking, everything. So, Wednesday Soup At Work was born. Random choice was Wednesday. Hump day maybe.

The first week returning after the holiday break was the debut. I was subtle about the whole thing for the first couple of weeks. I set up the crock pot in a kitchen area with some bowls, spoons and a little sign describing the soup and its ingredients. The first week I intended to just have the soup warm up in the morning after my drive to work and open up the crock pot about 11:00 but people didn't wait and they just started serving themselves about 8:30. No one really noticed me placing the soup out the first two weeks. I watched people help themselves and listened to the comments which were all positive. It was kind of fun to listen to the inquiries about who brought the soup and why.

The third week I added my name to the sign along with a preview of the next week's soup. Build anticipation don't ya know! I was surprised by the positive reaction when folks knew it was me. I got emails, texts and visits from people I had never met before with compliments and questions about why and just to discuss cooking. It was great! I have to admit the ego boost was really nice! My wife, Bertie, mentioned that I have built an expectation for people and wondered what will happen when I stop bringing soup in.

I found out a few weeks later when I took a couple of days off with one of them being Wednesday. I had a few people mention that they were disappointed because they had come to count on Wednesday as Soup Day.

As the next few weeks went by I found myself avoiding using recipes I had brought before and searching for new and really different recipes. The internet is an amazing thing. Al Gore is a genius.

So that's how and why Wednesday Soup at Work started. I've been pretty consistent in meeting my weekly goal of soup every week. Here are some of the soups I've brought in so far in no particular order:

Chicken Tortilla a really colorful presentation with a tomato base, white hominy, yellow corn, black bean, shredded chicken and diced avocado garnish. I add a can of El Pato mexican sauce for some extra flavor.
BLT & P (Bacon, Leek, Tomato and Potato) the potatoes are thinly sliced which was a great way to use potatoes in this recipe. Of course bacon makes everything good. This is a Rachel Ray recipe, yummo.
Lemon Chicken with Spaghetti this was one of the first recipes I made that called for lemon juice. Now I frequently use some lemon juice in many recipes to add a bit of tang when it is called for. This one is from Giada De Laurentiis.
Roasted Chile Potato with Greens & Chorizo this recipe calls for hot Hungarian Wax chiles which are also called banana chiles. I always thought these large yellow chiles were the ones used for pepperocinis. Wrong. This was a really flavorful soup with the chorizo and chiles. The chard was also an unusual touch. I got this one from Rick Bayless
Black Bean salt pork and ham hocks make this soup. I make this one at home fairly often. I got this recipe from the LA Times food section. The Times has recurring feature that responds to readers' requests for recipes for popular dishes from So. Cal. restaurants. This is from Las Brisas in Laguna Beach.

I'll continue to post soups with my comments.

Later.