Chicken Tortilla Soup

April 29, 2016 Allie

(Claire is back today to tell us about the great "Is soup a meal?" debate and her chicken tortilla soup!)

4 years of making this soup and all I have to show for it is this lousy photo

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think soup is a meal and those who do not. Seinfeld devoted air time to this raging debate. Relationships have ended over it (true story). My husband and I have this debate at the start of every autumn, when I start adding butternut squash soup into the rotation and he wants to know what else we're having for dinner.

I am firmly in the first camp. My husband thinks soup is a side dish or an appetizer. But, a funny thing happens when I make this soup. There is no debate. It is so flavorful, so satisfying, so layered, that there is no need for argument, or really, any conversation at all, since we are too busy slurping it down.

All you need to know is this soup is much easier than it looks. The list of ingredients seems long, but all comes together really quickly. The soup base is really the star here, so you do want to take the time to develop the flavors. Store bought chicken stock is fine, but if you made chicken stock from your leftover bones (from your lazy Sunday, perhaps?), this is the perfect place to use it! I've also used water in the past, and it's perfectly serviceable. Your garnishes are up to you, but whatever you choose, don't skip the tortilla strips! The flour tortillas crisp up really well, and turn into noodles after sitting in the soup for a while. I promise, a bowl of this will convince anyone that soup is certainly a meal!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:

1 tbsp canola oil, plus more for tortilla strips

1 large white onion, sliced

1 jalapeno, roughly chopped, seeds removed (or not if you like things spicaayyyy)

3 dried chipotle chilies, halved and stems removed*

2 tomatoes

½ tbsp. dried oregano

½ tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

½ tbsp. cumin

½ tsp chili powder

½ tsp paprika

1-2 cups shredded chicken**

2 cups frozen corn

1-2 tbsp chopped cilantro

3 tbsp fresh lime juice

4 cups chicken stocks

Suggested Garnish:

Crumbled queso fresco

Sour cream

Diced avocado

Fried tortilla strip***

Heat 1 TBSP canola oil in bottom of large dutch oven or stock pot over medium heat. If using split chicken breasts, place chicken skin side down and cook for 5 minutes. Flip chicken and cook for 3 more minutes. Remove from pot and place on large plate. Set aside. If using shredded chicken, proceed to step 2.
Add sliced onion and chopped jalapeno into pot. Saute until soft, about 6-8 minutes.
Meanwhile, fill a small saucepan with water 2/3 full and bring to a boil. Score the bottom of each tomato with an "x", and boil tomatoes in water for 1-2 minutes. Remove from pot, let cool, and peel skin away. Cut into quarters.
Add tomatoes to onions and peppers, along with chipotle, oregano, and cumin. Stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add chicken stock to pot and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. If using chicken breasts, remove skin from cooled chicken, and place chicken back into pot. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove chicken from pot and set aside to cool. If using shredded chicken, proceed to next step.
Remove all but 2 chipotle halves from pot. Using an immersion blender, blend the broth and vegetables until smooth. If you don't have an immersion blender, simply transfer broth and vegetables to a blender and puree. (Do this in small batches to avoid a ceiling full of soup!)
Pour the pureed soup back into the pot, and stir in paprika, chile powder, garlic powder, onion powder. Add salt to taste. Stir in frozen corn and shredded chicken. Bring back to a boil and simmer for at least 5 minutes, to allow the flavors to meld.
If using chicken breast, shred the chicken off the bone and add the chicken to the pot. Bring back to a boil and simmer for at least 5 minutes, to allow the flavors to meld.
Remove from heat. Stir in cilantro and lime juice.
Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with tortilla strips, cheese, avocado, and/or sour cream.

*These can be hard to find, but I've had good luck at Whole Foods. I happen to have a stash of crushed chipotle pepper that a lovely blogger sent me from Hatch, New Mexico, so I often use a tablespoon or so of that. If you can't find dried chipotles, feel free to substitute another dried chile, like an ancho. Be careful with canned chipotles, as they can impart a vinegary flavor you aren't really looking for here.

**if you don't have shredded chicken on hand, use two bone in, skin on split chicken breasts. I've included instructions for this above.

***Cut two flour tortillas into strips. Heat 1/4 inch of oil in bottom of a frying pan until shimmering. Stir the strips around until they get golden and crispy, working in batches if needed to avoid crowding the pan. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt.

Lazy Chicken

April 25, 2016 Claire Myers

(I was off wine tasting and dancing at a friend's Bachelorette party in San Luis Obispo this past weekend, and so this week I've called in a ringer for my very first guest post(!) to tell you all about how she's "perfected" roasted chicken. I'm still hesitant to call out a "perfect" roast chicken, but my sister Claire has cooked far more chickens than I ever have, so she knows what works for her. Today she's giving us the 3rd installment in The Roast Chicken Project, and Friday, she'll be talking about one of her favorite uses for the leftovers.)

The laziest chicken you ever did see.

Roast Chicken #3 - Lazy Chicken

Are you ready for maximum payoff with minimum effort? Did Julia’s chicken scare you off? Did Zuni Café’s seem a little too.... involved? Well pull up a chair, friend, this is the one you've been waiting for. This is the chicken equivalent of “I woke up like this,” the culinary version of “what, this old thing?” I promise you, anyone who eats this will think you slaved away for hours, basting and coddling and ensuring perfection, when, in reality, you put the bird in the oven and forgot about it for 3 hours.

In my house, roast chicken is a thing. We have it at least once a month, and as a result, my freezer is full of chicken carcasses and homemade stock. Lest you think I am crazy chicken lady, there are reasons. First, my husband goes crazy for it. We eat a pretty healthy diet, and meat only makes an appearance two or three times a week. But Sunday dinners are different, and with the week stretched out before us, we like to go all out. Braises, burgers, fried food, and at least once a month, roast chicken and mashed potatoes make their appearance. Second, a whole chicken gives you so much bang for your buck. Cook it once, and you will get at least another meal out of it, plus a fresh batch of homemade stock. Need I say more?

Since we have it roughly once a month, I have tried my fair share of recipes, and always come back to this one. Because it is perfect for Sundays. Because it isn't complicated. Because it is L-A-Z-Y.

I’ve been making this chicken for roughly two years, every since the recipe for “faux tisserie” chicken appeared in the March 2014 bon appetit. The first time, I followed the recipe to the letter, and it was delicious. But the thing is, the secret of this chicken is that it's not really about what you put on it. It's all about the method. You just leave the chicken in the oven for 3 hours and walk away. THAT'S IT. So while the bon appetit version is delicious, I have perfected it. (YES, Allie, I did).

By way of perfection, I have made this chicken even easier, even lazier. The original recipe called for fennel seeds, crushed red pepper, herbs, a lemon, a whole head of garlic….the list goes on. It's just so unnecessary. When I cook a chicken, I want it to be juicy, with crispy brown skin, and preferably I can achieve all of that in time for dinner. Enter this chicken. I’ve stripped away the fussy elements, and left it as it should be, all about the chicken. A bit of garlic and herbs give it some flavor, and the olive oil ensures a nice brown skin. But if you are truly lazy, know that I have made this with only salt and pepper, and it's just as good. Because, the chicken is the star. It cooks slowly, basting in its own fat, resulting in a tender, flavorful chicken that is ready for anything.

The only caveat? You really do need 3 hours. This is lazy chicken but it is not weeknight chicken. So make it on a Sunday. Pop it in the oven, do some laundry, watch some Netflix, bake a cake, whatever. What you won't be doing is worrying about what's for dinner.

Just give it a nice stern look, and voila!

Lazy Chicken

adapted from bon appetit

Ingredients:

2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP Kosher salt
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 TBSP of at least 2 of the following herbs (chives, thyme, parsley, oregano, or marjoram). Mix and match, or go crazy and use all of them!
1 tsp ground pepper
3-4 lb whole chicken

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and place in v rack in roasting pan.*
Mix together olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and herbs. Spread mixture all over chicken and inside cavity. Place chicken in pan. No tying, no trussing, don't stuff anything in there. LAZY!
Roast chicken for 2.5-3 hours. If you are in a hurry, it will likely be done at 2.5 hours, but the extra half hour allows the skin to continue to brown and crisp.
Let rest for 20 minutes, and carve into pieces, or shred the meat off the bone. This should be ridiculously easy.
Serve as desired. I recommend a nice bed of mashed potatoes and a side of green veggies.

*or, use a wire rack placed on top of a rimmed baking sheet or inside a glass baking dish. You can even use a bed of potatoes. You just want the chicken to be somewhat elevated from its drippings, otherwise the bottom will have soggy skin.

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Matzoh Donuts

April 22, 2016 Allie

First, can anyone tell me the right way to spell "matzoh/matzo/matzah"?

At the risk of sounding like a tourist in a religion I don’t belong to, I have to say that I love a good Seder. On a purely surface level, I find the ritual of the Seder to be a fun, interactive meal with (mostly) tasty food and interesting stories. My Seder attendance peaked during the four years I was in college*, when I would go to my Great-Aunt Gloria’s house every Passover. Her house was not the place to experience a full, traditional Seder, since she stopped keeping a kosher kitchen decades ago and many of the guests, including her Irish-Catholic husband, were newbies to Jewish tradition. But since we didn’t know any better, an abbreviated, 45-minute Seder was just fine. We all gamely tasted our bitter herbs, watched out for Elijah and just passed our gefilte fish to Uncle Tom (lover of ground fish stored in jelly and also the previously mentioned Irish-Catholic).

*Including one memorable Seder the semester I studied abroad in Israel, when friends and I did a reverse Exodus and celebrated in Egypt with some apple juice, chicken shawarma, french fries, and giant box of matzoh one guy dutifully carted up and down the Nile for the entire week we were there.

One staple food of every Seder at Gloria’s house were the Passover rolls, which I loved. These eggy, hollow rolls made out of matzoh meal were like Kosher popovers, and even after stuffing myself with brisket I had a hard time not polishing off the leftovers in the bread basket. I began making them every year around Passover even after Gloria and Tom moved to Arizona and I stopped attending Seders, discovering that they go equally well with leftover Easter ham or lamb.

I will be the first to admit however, that beyond my own affection for them, those rolls don’t have much to recommend them. Matzoh, generally speaking, is not something you would willingly eat on its own merits, beyond it being perfectly unleavened, and the rolls are definitely better as a vehicle for jam or sopping meat juices than they are on their own. So, of course, I started to wonder how I could improve them to make them a star in their own right. And so I decided to borrow from another Jewish holiday and deep fry the dough into cute little mini donuts.

These little donuts are damn good. They don’t puff and hollow out the way the baked rolls do, giving them a slightly fluffy interior and a crisp outside. Tossed in cinnamon sugar, they are a fantastic unleavened substitute for the little fried donuts you might find at a carnival or that I sometimes buy at Pier 39. Passover starts tonight, and these little guys would make a good addition to the Seder table or as a breakfast treat during the week. And if you happen to have a dairy Seder, just know that I dusted my test batch in white cheddar powder and they were kick ass (though I can't confirm that powder is kosher for Passover).

Matzoh Donuts

Makes about 2 dozen mini donuts

1 cup matzoh meal
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbs cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, combine matzoh meal, salt, and 1/2 tsp sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together 1/4 cup of sugar and cinnamon and set aside.
Bring water and oil to a boil in a small sauce pan, then pour over the matzoh mixture. Stir to combine and let cool slightly, then beat in the eggs. Let sit for 15 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a piping bag and pipe 1 1/2 to 2 inch rounds onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Heat a couple inches of oil in a large heavy bottomed pot or cast iron pan to 375 degrees.
When oil is hot, lift dough rounds from the parchment and carefully place in the hot oil. Fry in batches until golden on both sides, flipping halfway through, about 2-3 minutes total (they will fry quickly).
Using a spider or a slotted spoon, transfer the donuts from the oil to a paper-towel lined plate to drain, then immediately toss in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Serve warm or let cool on a wire rack. Donuts are best consumed the day they are made.