Well, on my sunday night league we finally got a W. I had just about forgotten how those felt. For the record, I went 4 for 4 with no errors at third (probably because I didn’t get any hits at me on 3rd).
I love a good chicken tortilla soup but everyone makes theirs different. I got a base recipe from a fellow culinary enthusiast and web designer, Patrick Fox. He was kind enough to send this to me right before he left town for his wedding. His recipe read like it was going to be good, but you know me, I have to do things differently. Not dramatically different, it’s really more or less his recipe, but it’s got a couple changes that I felt made it a little more… me. This recipe has some spice to it, so those of you that are a bit squeamish, you may want to back off some of the spice.
The Prep time is misleading, as there is a lot of prep, but most of it can be done while other things are cooking to make things more efficient. I put these steps in order to minimize cooking time allowing for prep while cooking. Certainly any prep work can be done earlier in the process as time allows.
Btw, I’m using a new convention. T = tablespoon, t = teaspoon.
Heat large stew pot to medium with 3 T veg oil.
While that is heating, rub chicken thighs with mixture of 1 T of salt, 1 T fresh ground black pepper, 1 t cumin, 1 t dried chipotle peppers, 1 t ground coriander.
Add chicken to oil and brown all sides of chicken. Once browned, add 2 Q water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and cover. Boil for abount 40 mins (or until chicken is done).
Chop yellow onion. Mince garlic. Chop, seed and de-stem poblano pepper.
Reconstitute dried chipotle peppers. Place in microwave safe dish, cover with water and nuke for a couple mins (until soft). Slice stems off peppers, cut peppers in half and scrape out seeds. Dice up.
Once chicken is cooked, take chicken out to drain and keep the stock warm.
Heat dutch oven to medium with 2 T vegetable oil. Put in diced yellow onion and minced garlic, saute until translucent (couple mins).
Add half of the diced chipotle peppers, diced poblano, 1 T ground cumin, 2 t ground coriander, 1 t essence & corn and cook for another few mins to soften the poblano peppers.
Add tomato paste & lime juice and cook for 2 more mins being sure to coat everything in paste.
Add black beans & chicken stock from stew pot and bring to a boil. Once mixture is homogeneous, bring down to a simmer & cover cook for about half an hour.
Add rest of the diced chipotle peppers to the sour cream with 1 t of salt, mix and refrigerate.
Dice up bunch of green onions and refrigerate.
Take chicken off bone. Be careful to not keep any of the gristle or connective tissue around bone joints. This is most easily done by hand. You want shredded chicken. Small bites.
Preheat oven to 400. Take corn tortillas, cut them in half and then in half inch wide strips. Put them on a non-stick cookie sheet and put them in the oven. After about 5 minutes, take them out, mix them around making sure to separate the ones that have clumped together. We are wanting to toast them, so browning is good, black is bad.
After soup has simmered for half an hour, mix in chicken. Simmer for 10 more mins.
Roughly chop up avocados. Do this right before serving to keep from discoloration.
To serve, put soup in bowl, top with tortilla strips, cheese, chopped green onions, chopped avocado and a dolllup of the chipotle crema.
Damn, we lost 19-18 in our softball game this evening. We were visitors and rallied back from 18-9 when time was out in the top of the 6th to tie it up. Still tied, bottom of the 6th, 2 outs on them to take it to extra innings and they hit a little blooper to left center. Left center plays it off the bounce makes a damned good throw to home and the catcher catches it and dives at the runner. The umpire calls him safe and that’s it. Tough loss, but a hell of a game. Can’t be mad about that one.