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??

Finally! We Bring You Brownies!

How have we possibly been so remiss?  We’ve been posting for more than a year and have shared more than 100 recipes, but not one of them was for brownies!  How is that even possible?  Well, in an effort to make amends for this egregious oversight, I bring you not just plain old brownies, but rich, chocolaty, chewy, gooey, caramel covered, pecan studded, turtle brownies.  You’ve waited long enough, so let’s get started. 

Here’s what you’ll need for the brownies:

⅓ cup cocoa
⅓ cup boiling water
¼ cup vegetable oil
6 Tablespoons butter
2 cups sugar
4 oz. chopped dark chocolate
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 eggs
1 ½ cups flour
You’ll also need about ½ cup of chopped pecans, but they don’t go inside the brownies.  Just set them aside for much later. 

Before you start with the food, line a 9x13 pan with parchment and preheat your oven to 350°

When that’s done, sift the cocoa into a sauce pan and pour over the boiling water.

Whisk over low heat until it becomes smooth.

Whisk in the sugar, oil, salt, and butter. 

Continue whisking over low heat until a good part of the sugar is dissolved and the mixture becomes very shiny.  Turn off the heat and add the chopped chocolate. 

Stir that in until it’s completely melted and incorporated.  In a separate bowl, crack your 3 eggs and beat them. 

Now, before adding them to your chocolate mixture, you need to make sure it’s not too hot.  Your finger will make the perfect thermometer for this.  Bathwater warm or cooler is fine.  If it feels hot, give it a few minutes to cool down before adding the eggs.  When it’s ready, go ahead and pour them in along with the vanilla. 

Whisk the mixture until the eggs are completely incorporated.

Sift the flour over the top.

Lose the whisk for this part and carefully fold or stir the flour in with a spatula.  You don’t want to over mix at this point.  When the flour is incorporated, pour the batter into your prepared pan.

Spread it to the edges and level it out as best you can. 

Now, into the oven for 30 – 35 minutes.  A toothpick inserted 1 inch from the edge should come out clean, and it’ll be shiny and crackly on top. 

Put those aside to cool completely.  I know, your whole house smells like brownies and it’s almost impossible, but you can do eet.  Once they’ve finished cooling, it’s time to start on the caramel.

Here’s what you’ll need:

¾ cups half & half, divided
3 Tablespoons syrup
¾ cups sugar
2 Tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

 (this caramel is on the salty side, which I like, but feel free to reduce the salt to 1/4 teaspoon if you prefer.)

Place everything but the vanilla and ¼ cup of the half & half into a pan over medium low heat.

Stir until the sugar is mostly dissolved, then increase the heat to medium and continue stirring until it comes to a boil.  Put the lid on and set a timer for 3 minutes.  During that time, get a little dish of ice water and wash your spoon, or get a clean one out.  When the time’s up, remove the lid.  It’ll probably look something like this. 

When it’s closer to ready, it will look more like this, though. 

Drip a little of the hot syrup into the water. 

It should come together into a ball that will mostly hold its shape, but is easily molded with your fingers. 

When you get to that point, turn off the heat and add the vanilla and half & half. 

It’ll hiss and sputter, but just stir, and it will calm down.  When the boiling has stopped, pour the caramel into a heatproof container set atop a hot pad or dish towel. 

As you can see, my caramel has little brown specks in it.  That just means it got a little dark in a spot on the bottom.  I had thought to toss it and start over, but it tasted so amazing, I decided to keep it.  Once it’s on the brownies, you’ll never even know.  Give the caramel a while to cool.  You want it to be a soft, spreadable consistency, but not runny.  I got impatient and put mine in the fridge for a bit.  While it cools, back to the brownies.  Remove them from the pan and cut them down to fit snuggly into a square pan. 

If you have a 9x9, that would be ideal.  Mine was 8x8, but I made it work. 

You should have a piece something like this leftover.  See those edges there?  Those are for you to eat. 

Remove the rest of the edges, and cut the remaining chunk into little squares.  About ¾ of an inch or so. 

I know, you think I’ve surely gone over the cliff, but stay with me.  I promise I don’t need a padded cell just yet.  So, back to the brownies that are in the square pan.  Pour the cooled caramel over the top, reserving about 2 Tablespoons. 

As you can see, I decided to line the pan with parchment for easy removal and cutting when they’re done.  Spread the caramel to the edges and sprinkle ⅓ cup or so of the chopped pecans over the top. 

Now, take your little brownie cubes and arrange them sort of haphazardly across the surface.  Press them gently into the caramel.

Heat the remaining caramel for 5 – 10 seconds in the microwave, just to thin it a little.  Then drizzle it all over the top. 

Last, but not least, sprinkle on the remaining chopped pecans. 

Could you just leave the whole thing in one pan and spread the caramel and pecans over the top?  Sure, but why would you when you can create a masterpiece like this?

I hope this has gained your forgiveness for our brownie blunder.  Is there something you’d really like to see that we’ve somehow overlooked?