Kitchen

Chicken Tortilla Soup

On January 31, 2011, we made a yummy chicken tortilla soup. We started with a CrockPot Tortilla Soup recipe from Stephanie O’Dea’s blog A Year of Slow Cooking and made a few changes.

Ingredients

Original Revised Notes
3 cups of chicken broth 6 cups of chicken broth The soup was too thick for our liking with only 3 cups of chicken broth, so we doubled it.
1 ½ cups cooked chicken Same Needs a little more chicken.
½ onion ½ onion
1 cup frozen roasted corn 1 cup frozen corn Might try doubling the corn next time.
2 green onions skipped
28 oz can of tomatoes and juice Same plus one can of Rotel Diced or crushed tomatoes might work better.
1 cup chopped up vegetables that you have on hand 2 ½ cups of diced veggies:

1 cup carrots, ½ cup celery, 1 cup peppers. (We had red and orange peppers on hand, but green and yellow would work, too.)

Some more veggies might be nice, or maybe some black beans.
4 cloves of garlic Same
¼ t crushed red pepper flakes Same
½ t cayenne pepper Same
1 t cumin Same
salt to taste (especially if using a no-salt broth like I was) No additional salt added
optional garnish:

tortilla chips

parmesan cheese

sour cream

We ate the soup with tortilla chips (but rice would be nice, too), and we skipped the parmesan cheese for this Mexican-inspired soup.

Directions

The original recipe also had different directions. Here are our directions:

  1. Combine all of the ingredients except the chicken.
  2. Simmer on the stovetop for 3 hours.
  3. Add the cooked chicken.
  4. Simmer for an additional 2 hours.
  5. Enjoy your delicious Chicken Tortilla Soup!

Basic Hummus Recipe +

Basic Hummus Recipe +

Ingredients

  • 2 cups canned garbanzo beans, drained
  • 1/3 cup tahini
  • ¼ cup lemon juice
  • ½ to 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cloves garlic, halved

Directions

Place the garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, salt and garlic in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. Transfer to a serving bowl and enjoy your hummus!

Variations

  • Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over the hummus and sprinkle with a pinch of paprika and a teaspoon of minced fresh parsley.
  • Try spicing up the hummus by adding ¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, ½ to 1 teaspoon ground cumin, and ½ to 1 teaspoon ground coriander.
  • Roasted red peppers or kalamata olives make yummy add-ins or garnishes.

Notes

  • We find it easier to make in the food processor.
  • Sometimes we use jarred minced garlic and/or Real Lemon juice. Not quite as good as fresh, but still yummy.
  • Add a little olive oil while blending if the hummus starts to thicken too much.
  • We eat hummus with pita chips, pita bread, crudités, warm tortillas, tortilla chips, etc. Blue corn tortilla chips go very nicely with this dip.

Kitchen Science: Venturi, Bernoulli, & Strawberry-Banana Smoothies

Chefs Daddy and Matthew made us some yummy strawberry-banana smoothies this evening amid an interesting kitchen physics discussion that briefly (and lightly) touched upon such topics as the Venturi Effect, Bernoulli’s Principle, and vortexes. ROFLOL The smoothies were delicious, and Chef Matthew had a great time learning how to operate the blender.  😀

Brown Rice Salad

Mike made this light and yummy Brown Rice Salad to go along with dinner tonight (lightly seasoned turkey meatballs and sautéed squash & zucchini). It was fantastic!

He suggested that next time we mix up the dressing separately before tossing with the rest of the salad. We also found the dressing mild, so we might up the crushed red pepper and Dijon mustard next time as well.