Tortilla Soup

Tortilla Soup

What makes this 30-minute soup so special are the condiments that are served with the broth.  Be adventurous and use this recipe as your platform.  Consider adding freshly cut corn, black beans, cubed zucchini or sliced Serrano chiles.  While I recommend frying your own tortilla strips, to save time, crumble in good quality, store bought tortilla chips instead.

Serves 6

1/4 cup vegetable or peanut oil

1 white onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon Chipotle chili powder, or to taste

1 teaspoon Chipotle abobo sauce (from canned chipotle chilis), optional

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano

3 cups chopped tomatoes, peeled and seeded, fresh or canned

6 cups chicken broth, divided, canned is fine (see recipe)

3 cups shredded cooked chicken

Condiments

Fried Tortilla Chips (see instructions below)

Crumbled Queso Ranchero

Grated Jack cheese

Avocado cubes

Sliced radishes

Shredded cabbage

Fresh Salsa

Chopped Cilantro

Lime Wedges

Warm the oil in a saucepan over medium heat; add onion and garlic and saute for three minutes.  Add Chipotle chili powder and continue to cook until onion is translucent, about three more minutes.  Add tomatoes and cook for two minutes. 

Add one cup of broth and bring to a boil.  Turn off heat and let cool.  Blend the soup base until well pureed.  Place back into the saucepan and add remaining broth.  Add chicken and reheat.

For serving, place condiments in decorative bowls.  Let each individual place their chosen toppings into their bowl.  Ladle hot soup over condiments and enjoy.

Tortilla Strips

10 corn tortillas

Canola or peanut oil for frying

Cut the tortilla in half then cut the halves into strips.  Heat the oil to 350 degrees or until a strip starts to sizzle and crisp.  Add in a handful of strips into the oil and cook until crisp, about 3 minutes, stirring periodically.  Remove from oil onto a papertowel or a rack over a cookie sheet.  Salt while hot.  Repeat until tortillas are done.  May be done earlier and stored in an airtight container after the strips have cooled.

Chicken Broth for Tortilla Soup

Chicken Broth

 

This simple, light chicken broth is made without an initial sear of the chicken or vegetable.  The meat and vegetables are added to the pot, water is added and you cook everything until you have broth.  I used the meat from the chicken for my soup but you could also make this stock with just bones. Roasting or searing everything beforehand will give you a brown stock that is more rich in flavor but I was in a rush.  My soup was perfect with this simple stock and I put it together in a snap! 

• 1 onion, coarsely chopped
• 4 carrots, sliced
• 4 sticks celery, sliced
• 1 small fennel bulb, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, smashed
• 2 sprigs thyme
• 6 sprigs parsley
• 1 bay leave
• 6 peppercorns
• 1 whole 4-6 pound chicken
• 1 cup white wine
• water to cover

Place the onions, carrots, celery, fennel, garlic, thyme, parsley, bay and peppercorns in a large stock pot.  Add chicken to cover the vegetables and herbs.  Since I was using the meat for my tortilla soup, I cut my chicken up so I could pull out my breasts before my legs for cooking timing.  I covered the vegetables with my chicken pieces to avoid all of the vegetables and herbs floating to the surface and getting scooped up as I skimmed the foam. Add the wine and cover the chicken completely with the water.  Bring the water to a boil, skimming off the foam as it forms.  Once the water comes to a boil, reduce to low heat and until the water just rumbles when it is covered.  Cover the pot and cook for 30 minutes, skimming the foam periodically. 

 

Pull out the breast and continue to cook another 10 minutes.  Once the breasts are cool enough to handle, pull the meat off the bones and add the bones back to the soup pot.  After 10 minutes, pull out the legs and let cool.  I used the meat on the wings to flavor my stock but you could also pull out the wings and pick the meat but again, place the bones back in the pot when you are done.  Once the legs are cool enough to handle, pick off the meat and add the bones back to the pot.

 

Once the bones are back in the pot, I let the stock cook without the lid to reduce the liquid a bit, again cooking it at a low rumble.  Cook until the flavor has developed.  I cooked mine about 45 minutes more for a light broth.  If you want a strong flavor, cover and cook up to three hours more.

 

The trick now is to remove all of the bones, vegetables, fat and bone particles.  To do this I first remove the larger bones and vegetables with my skimmer directly into my trash.  I then use a strainer and strain my stock directly into my large, 8-cup measuring cup.  I then place my strainer onto my stock pot and cover it with a tea towel and strain my broth through the tea towel.

 

The particles and fat do not go through the tea towel so your broth is cleaned without having to cool the fat.  As I am pouring the broth through the towel, I pull the towel to a clean spot to give me a "clean" strainer, not full of bone particles which slows the draining process.  I then lift the fat and dump it into the sink and start again.  After this process, the stock is fat free and clear; ready to use for your tortilla soup!

 

Paella!!!

Seafood, Chicken and Chorizo Paella

Flank Steak with Harrisa

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Pecans

Ceasar Salad with Parmesan and Homemade Croutons

If someone asked me what my signature dish was, I would have to say Paella. It was the first dish my husband and I cooked together in college. He swooned me by cooking pheasant (that he shot and had in his freezer), rice pilaf and broccoli with hollandaise sauce, after a study session. Seeing that he liked food, I bought him a cookbook and it was in that cookbook, Julia Child and Company, that we found An American Paella in a Chinese-Style Electric Wok to cook and the rest is history.

Since then we have had years of consecutive Paella parties where we have woke up with with way too many people sleeping in our living room. Paella was the first dish we cooked at our christening dinner party in Barcelona, Paella was the main entrée for the Teacher’s Appreciation Luncheon and Paella was a station at my friend’s wedding. When I tell my family I am cooking paella, everyone comes home.

It was last summer that we cooked paella for my cooking partner’s 50^th birthday. She did not want to celebrate her birthday. I had to talk her into a party. All my suggestions of fun things to do fell on deaf ears. To me, a birthday is a REASON to celebrate, whether it is a luncheon, dinner cooked by loving friends or a dinner out. She loves to bike so I twisted her arm to a weekend party encompassing all of the above along with her favorite, a grinding bike ride. My partner in crime is an Iron Man triathlete and I ride with her and THAT is my claim to fame. Anyway, her 50^th turned from nothing, into a great, three day weekend of daytime outdoor adventures and nighttime kitchen fun.  You know, kind of like Woodstock.

The highlight of the weekend was us at my stove cooking two paellas side by side! I was famished after a 40 mile, difficult bike ride, so the dish we created tasted better than ever. My husband cooked flank steak with a harissa sauce and our friends helped make a Caesar and beet salad. Her birthday was a weekend to remember!

I have changed my paella a touch since I first made it, changed it enough to just perfect it! I hope you enjoy all the recipes!

Paella

All colors of wine goes with Paella. Just make sure it is not too strong of a red. We like Pinot Noir, a Rioja, a Napa Chardonnay, even a French Rose

Serves 8

8 chicken thighs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound chorizo (Spanish cure), cut into ½ inch slices
1 cup onions, chopped
1 ½ cups peppers (I use a mix of red, orange and yellow
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 tablespoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup vermouth or dry white wine
4 cups chicken or shrimp broth (Swanson's is just fine but if you have some shrimp shells, a      nice, salted shrimp broth is lovely)
2 cups rice (if you can get Spanish rice, by all means use it but arborio rice will also work. Uncle Bens is fool proof.)
16 large shrimps, prepped, and seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper
6 large scallops, prepped and seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper
16 clams washed
Any other fish you want like squid, mussels, halibut, etc., just do a piece for everyone, do not crowd.
1 cup chopped, peeled and seeded, tomatoes
1 cup garbanzo beans
1 cup cooked or defrosted peas or green beans or a mixture of both

Heat the olive oil in a large paella pan over medium high heat and sear the chicken on both sides. Remove chicken and add chorizo; sear well on one side only, remove and add to chicken. In the fat from the chicken and chorizo, saute the onions two minutes or until soft, add the peppers, garlic and all the spices and cook until spices are aromatic, two more minutes. Add the wine and let it reduce for one more minute and add the chicken or shrimp broth; bring back to a boil. Add the chicken, cover with either a lid or piece of foil (if your paella pan is too big for a lid), reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken is almost done. Add chorizo. At this point you can let the mixture rest until you are ready. You could actually cook this recipe up until this point and refrigerate the mixture until you are ready.

From here on out, you have 20 minutes to a half an hour to finish the dish. I like to have my paella pan ready to go with all my accompaniments; rice, shrimp, clams, fish of your choice, tomatoes, garbanzo beans and peas or green beans. Bring your liquid back to a boil and add rice making sure all the rice has settled evenly on the bottom of your pan and not hanging out on top of the chicken, I shake the rice down into the broth. After that you want to stir the rice as little as possible, really not at all, to avoid making risotto and bringing out the starch. Open boil the rice until you see rice starting to float to the surface. This should take around 5 to 7 minutes. Add all of you fish, pushing them evenly down into the broth to cook. If you are cooking the clams and mussels in the paella, I place them hinge-side down, half way into the broth. (If you cook them separately, add a little of the wine in the pan to steam them and add them in at the end along with the broth, maybe the broth a little earlier, so it can absorb). Turn the heat down to low and strew on the tomatoes, and garbanzos and just a bit later, the green beans and peas. You are just heating up the garbanzos, green beans and peas. I then start playing with the fish, pulling out the fish that is cooked and placing in on top of the rice, on the side of the pan, like a warming tray. If it is getting to dry add more stock or wine, if it is too soupy, be thankful, the broth is WONDERFUL and in Spain many even ask for their paella "wet". Do not stir the rice though. If you feel the rice is not cooking properly for some reason, pop it into a 400 degree oven for a few minutes. Once the rice is al dente and the fish is cooked and vegetables hot, turn off the heat and cover the paella with a tea towel while you dress your salad. Serve directly from the paella pan with a Caesar salad with homemade croutons to soak up all the wonderful paella juices!!

Indian Butter Chicken

In a medium sized bowl, mix the onion, tomatoes, cucumber and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Add the yogurt and mix well. Let sit at least 15 minutes but no more than two hours before serving.

I read cookbooks like a novel. If I need a lift, I buy a cookbook. Actual I buy a pair of shoes first then read the cookbook while glancing at the new shoes on my feet. That truly does put me in a good mood and back in the kitchen with my new high heels! When the head of fundraising for our children’s school asked me to organize a community cookbook to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of our school, I never imagined how much I would enjoy the project. I know she was thinking of a smattering of recipes in a binder, but I saw a professional cookbook with tested recipes, headers and comments. She wanted the book by December and it was January.

First I bought two books on recipe and food writing and studied. I also interviewed some of my cooking mentors that wrote books and all they said was edit, edit, edit. Through a community email I asked for help from the parents at the school and had a coffee to enlist my crew and cherry pick some key people. Someone to choose and learn the software, someone to work with the design, someone to coordinate the recipe testers, a person or two to write about the history of our wonderful school and a community to give recipes.

As the recipes came in I began to realize how much I LOVE to write, review and edit a recipe. I ran home from work excited to get onto my computer to see what recipes were sent me. Kind of like now, looking at my homepage to see if any new comments or ratings came in! While we had a group of 35 testers, I tested more than 50% of all the recipes. I definitely choose the best ones to test AND to this day I cook about ten of those recipes on an everyday basis.

I received recipes that were just a list of ingredients with cryptic instructions, recipes so perfect I KNEW they came straight out of a cookbook and the author needed to be recognized. I received a recipe for coke cherry jello that I REALLY wanted to like but all in all, they were all good home cooked recipes without much packaged products. I then took all of these different formats and began changing them to a single recipe style as the books taught me. I took some liberties and changed recipes to make them better. Sautéing an ingredient to build more flavor, putting in a homemade dressing when it called for bottled, changing an order to make it easier. Once I was done, I edited the recipe at least twice more before I gave it to my recipe testers. I asked the testers to interview the recipe originator to ask where they got their recipe and why they chose the recipe in the first place. The tester’s results helped me make sure the instructions were clear and also guided me in writing the headers.

When we were done, which meant editing each recipe at least 10 more times on top of my work, I got nervous. I had made so many changes to our community’s cherished recipes, they might feel the new “perfected” recipe was not their own anymore. When we were almost ready to hand over our finished product to our computer software wiz, we were all concerned we might have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite recipes! We all agreed though, we had to print them out and send them to the recipe originator and ask for their approval. We gave them five days to respond, if we did not hear from them, it was a vote of approval. Those five days were long but to our surprise, we got more compliments than complaints. A few did feel that I made things too complicated and they were right. To make both of us happy, I changed the recipe back to the original and then in the tester’s comments, gave the recipe for the homemade dressing, for example. It worked and the book was a complete success and we had it in our community’s hands before Christmas break!

Tonight we had one of my favorite recipes from the cookbook, Indian Butter Chicken. It was given to me by my twin. We always get confused for each other and I LOVE it because she is a doll! It is one of her good friend’s recipes and she was kind enough to share it with us.

Indian Butter Chicken with Raita

This dish must be accompanied by the recipe at the end, raita. It cools the heat of the dish, add a fresh crunch and acts like your vegetable. I made this dish last night, in December so was worried about the tomatoes. I bought cherry tomatoes and they were surprisingly good. If they weren’t, I was going to use extra cucumber. You can make raita a number of ways and may do not call for tomatoes at all. So if your tomatoes are bad, do not use them.

Indian food can be a bit difficult with wine pairings because of the spiciness and complex flavor blends. My first thought would be a Gewurztraminer again more dry and the same with a Riesling. But like my last wine recommendation, this dish also goes well with beer!

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, minced
• ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, skinned
• 1 to 2 Serrano chilies or to taste, roughly chopped
• 1 cup chopped cilantro leaves with stems
• 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs or breasts cut into small pieces
• 12 each blanched almonds and raw cashews, ground fine in a food processor
• 1 ½ cup peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon Tandoori paste, available in any Indian grocery store
• 1 teaspoon salt or to taste
• ¼ cup sour cream, or more to taste
• Cilantro leaves for garnish, chopped
• ½ cup sliced almonds, toasted for 7 minutes in a 350 degree oven

Heat oil is a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion and cinnamon and fry until the onions are lightly browned.

While the onions are cooking, place the ginger, garlic and cilantro in a food processor and pulse until completely minced and smooth. Add to the onions along with 2 tablespoons of water and cook until the mixture is dry, about 2 minutes.

Add the chicken pieces and sauté until the chicken has turned white. Pour in the ground nuts, chopped tomatoes with juice, tomato paste and Tandoori powder; mix thoroughly. Bring to a simmer, cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 20 minutes.

Add sour cream, mix and simmer, uncovered for an additional 10 minutes on low heat. Salt to taste.Garnish with cilantro leaves and serve with raita (recipes below) and Bastmati rice.

Raita

• 1 small sweet yellow onion, chopped in ¼ inch cubes
• 2 small tomatoes, cut in half, seeded and chopped in ¼ inch cubes
• 1 cup cucumber, seeded and chopped in ¼ inch cubes
• ½ cup chopped cilantro, lightly chopped
• ½ teaspoon salt or to taste
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• ½ cup plain whole fat yogurt

In a medium sized bowl, mix the onion, tomatoes, cucumber and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Add the yogurt and mix well. Let sit at least 15 minutes but no more than two hours before serving.