Chicken Tortilla Soup

I briefly contemplated making brownies this week as well. But holy crap there's just no way to follow Taneasha's turtle brownies with something sweet. Those things are freaking unreal.

Instead, I opted for something completely different.

Chicken tortilla soup is this weird soup that never seems to be the same and has some strange little quirks to it. I mean, it's chicken soup, but you don't put the chicken in the soup? It's tortilla *soup*, but for some reason the tortilla chips are supposed to be crunchy? I have no clue how I'm supposed to pull that off, but apparently it's such a requirement that people will actually send the soup back in restaurants if the tortilla chips get soggy too fast? wtf?

Some people are very fussy bitches.

So, taking what we could, and what we wanted to, from various recipes we'd found on line, and memories of the soup from restaurants (I've only had it once in a restaurant, but Recipe Guy had a few stories for it) we created what we are calling "Chicken Tortilla Soup"

And now for something completely different.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

What you need:

• 2 L of chicken broth
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 or 2 onions (one large or two small)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 zucchini
• 1 poblano or anaheim or bell pepper (but preferrably poblano)
• 1 tin of black beans
• 1 tin of stewed tomatoes, diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 lime
• chicken (leftover works quite nicely)
• tortillas
• cilantro
• cheese (cheddar if you must, but ideally monterey jack)

What you gotta do:

So, if you don't have cans, jars, or boxes of chicken broth handy, you can do the next best thing: put a whole chicken (or cut up bits of one) in a pot, cover it with water, boil it for a couple hours.

If you boil a chicken for broth, you'll also find you have a handy source of chicken for the soup too. Leftovers freeze nicely, and once you've stripped all the meat from it, you can actually boil the bones again with some veggies to make a nice chicken stock. (Freeze them in the mean time).

Heat a medium pan over medium heat and then sautee the onions and garlic in the oil for a few minutes. Add the cumin and let it get nice and fragrant; it just needs a couple minutes.

Add the broth. Then tomatoes,

the diced veggies, and the bay leaf.

The pot we chose was getting a little full, so we only used half the tin of diced tomatoes. It was a large one anyway. We used difference in a spaghetti sauce. Tasty sauce is tasty!

Black beans are next! Drain and rinse them first though. They totally sink to the bottom of the pot, but they are there.

Squeeze in the juice of one lime. Whole thing.

Let this simmer just until the zucchini are just done. This does not take long; 15, maybe 20 minutes. Yup, this is actually a fast soup dinner. Totally doable on a weeknight, uses up leftovers, has veggies, and includes chips. Perfect Wednesday night dinner.

While that's simmering, shred the leftover chicken into bowls. Now, I'm not sure exactly why it has to be done this way, but Southern Momma (that's Recipe Guy's momma) absolutely insists that it must be done this way. Must! Shrill objection if it is not.

I tend to look at food from a somewhat frugal point of view, and I'm guessing that since this dish uses leftovers, it was a way to thinly spread the leftover chicken between bowls without any getting lost in the pot and without all of it ending up in one bowl. Whatever the reason, we did it this way.

You are welcome to add the chicken to the pot if you prefer.

The tortillas... in the bowl, on the edge, under the broth, on top afterwards, completely abandoned in favour of masa instead... I don't really know what to say here except that if you think your tortillas are going to stay crunchy in soup, you're a fucking moron.

I was aiming for something to take pictures of so I lined the sides of the soup bowls with them.

Ladel the soup over the chicken and tortillas,

then top with cilantro and cheese.

Oh yeah, some people put the cheese in the bowl with the chicken before ladelling the soup on.

Really, you're going to have to figure out how you want to do your layers on your own. This is a very individualized thing. When Recipe Guy when in for seconds, he crunched the tortilla chips up in his hands

and put them on the bottom, along with the cheese.

Some recipes require that slices of avocado be placed on top of, or in the soup once it's in the bowl. Warm avocado kinda grosses me out, so we didn't do that. Guacamole makes a nice side dish for this though, particularly if you have some non-soup-soaked tortilla chips handy.

Because once you pour soup on them this happens:

Tasty, but not crunchy.

Tortillas don't stay crunchy after you've poured soup onto them.

Seriously! Who thinks this??

because we always do what we're told

So our lovely winner, Angel, suggested that we make either a turkey pot pie or some kind of spaghetti with chicken. Well, we go all out around here when people give us suggestions. I mean, really, I once made cookies with garam masala in them because one of the guys at work challenged me to do it. Chicken Spaghetti? No problem.

I did have to pause when I was told that most people mean some kind of ... *cringe* casserole (gag) when they say "chicken spaghetti."

I have an undying holy hate for anything called casserole. While this kind of thing serves as comfort food for many people, memories of my mother's pasta-and-cans-of-mystery-soup dinners are things of nightmares.

I do not, and will not ever, make casseroles.

And because of this, I turned to my old standby. One cutting board, one pan, and dinner in as little time as possible.

Chicken Spaghetti

What you need:

• 2 chicken breasts
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 4 giant mushrooms
• 1 small box of spinach
• 1/3 c basil leaves
• 1-1/2 c table cream
• 1/4 c cream cheese
• 1/4 c parmesan
• 1/2 box linguine

What you gotta do:

Get a nice big pot of water on to boil. (this is the pasta equivalent of remembering to preheat the oven)

So, because I'm damn lazy, hate washing dishes and have limited cutting boards, I always chop the veggies first. Mince the garlic, slice the mushrooms, and chiffonade the basil.

Then, once those are taken care of, I use the same board for raw meat. Chicken breast cooks faster when it's thinner, and it's quite satisfying to make big loud banging noises as you shake everything on the counter with every swing. I remember my mom having a "meat mallet" and it seemed like a common tool at one time, but most utensil sets nowadays don't seem to include them.

It is a bit of a specialized item and I'm quite fond of multi-purpose items, so I use the bottom of a Pyrex measuring cup. Works just fine.

Bring a bit of butter to bubbly in a large pan.

Add the chicken breats and cook until it's just starting to brown. (um, that's pepper. I like pepper. Which reminds me: salt and pepper.)

Flip them over and give them just a couple minutes then take them out of the pan and cover them with foil. Don't worry if it's not entirely cooked all the way through. It's going to rest on a plate for a while and then go back into the pan. It'll have lots of time to finish cooking.

Dump the mushrooms and garlic into the pan. If you'd like you can add a bit more butter with them.

If your spinach is small-leafed enough, you can just toss it in as is. If the leaves are a little on the big side, you can tear or chop it before adding it. Me, I just tore it up a bit since I'd already dirtied the only cutting board I wanted to wash.

Once the spinach has wilted a bit (that takes like 2 minutes, and likely you'll be busy adding linguine to water while it happens) add the cream,

and the cream cheese.

Let this simmer for about 5 minutes over reasonably high heat. I used cream with 18% milk fat, which is less than whipping cream, but more than what typically goes into coffee. If you've got whipping cream, cut it with a bit of milk or chicken broth. The cream cheese isn't totally necessary in this, but it adds a nice bit of cheesey flavour.

When your pasta is almost done, slice your chicken breasts. Add it and the basil and grated parmesan to the pan.

Drain the pasta, leaving just a little bit of water in the bottom of the pot, then dump it all into the sauce pan.

Give this a good mix, and keep it bubbling over medium high until the sauce is the consistency you want.

I kept mine bubbling for about 3 or 4 minutes before I loaded it onto a plate and into a couple of containers for lunch tomorrow and dinner in a couple days.

So, there we go. A deconstructed Chicken Spaghetti casserole (gag) made with fresh ingredients, in about 30 minutes with as few dishes as humanly possible.

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