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??

the morning after

Migas is apparently one hell of a hang over food. It's quite handy too that it's made from a bunch of leftovers.

It apparently originated in Austin, Texas, but has spread to the surrounding area. And it's so fabulous a meal that I've decided to spread it even further. And while it is a handy morning after breakfast, it's also good to have for dinner before the drinks begin.

Migas typically starts with day-old tortillas, chopped and fried in oil, but if you don't have fresh tortillas, or if you're really not in the mood to deal with the extra step, tortilla chips (particularly the broken up ones in the bottom of the bag) will work just fine. Just as leftover pico de gallo will work in place of spending time chopping onions and jalapenos first thing in the morning.

Holy hell, I am lazy.

Sometimes I even surprise myself.

Migas

What You Need

• 2-3 fresh corn tortillas
• 2 tbsp peanut oil (or some other oil with a high smoke point)

OR

• 1/2 c broken pieces of tortilla chips

-

• 1/2 jalapeno
• 1/4 onion
• 1/2 tomato
• cilantro

OR

• about 1/2 c of pico de gallo

-

• 4 eggs
• 1/4 c milk or cream
• bacon, ham or sausage
• 1/2 c cheddar or monteray jack cheese
• more cilantro if you have it

What you Gotta Do

If you're feeling up to the extra step, and have fresh tortillas handy, chop them into pieces. Shape isn't that big a deal, but they should be relatively small. Bite sized. 

In a shallow pan over medium high, heat the oil until is starts to shimmer, then sprinkle in the tortillas. Fry them until they're golden then fish them out of the oil and set them on some paper towels while you do more stuff.

If you're using fresh veggies, now's the time to chop them. Diced fairly small. If you've got pico de gallo (or salsa, in a pinch) leftover from last night's festiviites, you can hold onto it for now.

Drain most of the oil from the pan. Or, drain it all and replace it with bacon fat.

If you're using fresh veggies, you're going to want to sautee them in the fat for a bit. Just enough to take the crunch off.

While those are cooking crack the eggs into a bowl and add the milk or cream.

Beat them together until they're starting to get a little foamy. Or, until you decide you're too tired to keep beating them, which ever comes first. Depends on how hungover lazy you are.

Pour the eggs into the pan with the veggies. If you don't already have veggies in the pan, add them now.

The reason you don't have to pre cook the pico: pico de gallo uses a combination of lime juice (acid) and salt to break down the cell walls of the veggies. This is a similar process to what cooking does. Same thing happens in ceviche, which I do not recommend for breakfast while hung over.

Add the meat now too. I had ham, but whatever your fave breakfast meat is will work.

Stir this all around until the egg is mostly set.

Sprinkle on the tortillas.

And then the cheese.

Turn the heat off and cover the pan so the cheese will melt.

While the cheese is melting, warm up the rest of the tortillas (I layer mine with damp paper towels and nuke em for a few seconds), and mash the leftover beans. This step is of course optional, but a pretty typical way to serve migas.

Yes, I had tortillas, and yes I still used the chips. I did say "if you're really not in the mood to deal with the extra step." I wasn't in the mood. Well...

Serve your migas with warmed tortiallas and beans, and some seriously strong coffee.

What's your favourite morning after food?