TORTILLA SOUP

A spicy soup with cheese, tomatoes, and corn

This is a recipe from Salmagundi, a San Francisco soup restaurant chain.

Ingredients

(Serves 12)

1.5 kg chicken pieces
4 l water
5 ml celery seed
5 ml black peppercorns
2 garlic cloves, peeled
500 g canned whole peeled tomatoes (do not drain!reserve the liquid)
1 onion, cut into 1-cm pieces.
1 green pepper, cut into 1-cm pieces.
3 sprigs fresh cilantro
2.5 ml ground cumin
2.5 ml cayenne or chili powder
1 ml ground white pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
300 g frozen corn
4 green onions, coarsely chopped
salt
180 g cooked rice (cook 75 g of raw rice to get that much cooked rice)
10 ml minced parsley
100 g tortilla chips
200 g grated cheddar cheese

Procedure

Combine chicken and water in stockpot. Add celery seed, peppercorns and garlic tied in cheesecloth. Cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 45 minutes.
Remove chicken from broth and let cool. Strain broth and return to pot.
Add tomatoes, onion, green pepper, cilantro, cumin, cayenne, white pepper and garlic. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
Add corn and green onion. Simmer 10 minutes. While this is cooking, skin and bone the chicken pieces and cut the meat into bite-size pieces.
Add salt to taste. Add the chicken, rice and parsley to the broth, and heat through.
Garnish each bowl with a few crisp tortilla chips (homemade are best, or those made in a homemade style) and some grated cheddar cheese.

Notes

I usually make this with leftover chicken. You don't actually need a whole chicken worth!even a small amount will do. In this case, I use a mixture of chicken broth and water (about 2/3 chicken broth) for the liquid.

Rating

Difficulty: easy.
Time: 2 hours, most of it simmering.
Precision: approximate measurement OK.

Contributor

 
Vicki O'Day 
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto CA 
hplabs!oday

Recipe last modified: 18 Mar 86

Original header

Path: decwrl!recipes
From: oday@hplabs (Vicki O'Day)
Newsgroups: mod.recipes
Subject: RECIPE: Tortilla Soup
Message-ID: <3730@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: 20 Jun 86 03:39:31 GMT
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