Since the weather has truly turned into fall (as evidenced by how many days I have recently grabbed turtlenecks and sweaters out of my closet) my cravings have turned to soup. I’ve dug out all my cookbooks and weblinks and gathered a few new recipes to try. My mom is also having a series of dental surgeries, and I’m planning to bring her a bunch of frozen homemade soups to enjoy during her recoveries, so I'm sure she'll be glad of the variety.
Since it’s NaBloPoMo and all, I’ll share my favorites here. (Such a win-win ). And bonus for all of us: today’s entry lets me spout more random mavinformationTM (this is my new homemade word for “maven information”). (Win-win-win!) Ok, so maybe you're not thrilled about the random trivia part - oh,well.
I love chicken enchilada soup. I nearly always order it if it’s on the menu (Chili’s has such a great one that I hardly know what their entrées taste like – I never get past the soup). My favorite characteristics are the creamy thickness, the spice, bits of tomato, the big chunks of shredded chicken and the cheese, ooh the cheese.
The Chili’s copy-cat recipes on the web all call for Velveeta. I can’t bear to feed my family an entire block of “processed cheese food”, so that was a no-go. Also, I wanted to add some favorite things to it – I figured if I’m going to make it myself, I might as well (it’s my kitchen after all).
So, here’s what I came up with, followed by some mavinformationTM about masa and corn and lime. If you’d like to print the recipe for yourself, I’ve posted it as a Word doc and also as a PDF.
Please leave a comment if you try it – and I’d love any soup recipes (without beef) that you have to share!
Chicken Enchilada Soup
2-3 T. vegetable oil
3 cups diced yellow onion
3 t. ground cumin
2 t. chili powder
½ t. cayenne pepper (omit if you don’t want the heat)
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 cups masa harina with lime, or instant masa* (NOT regular corn meal)
3 ½-4 quarts chicken broth, divided
1 20 oz can diced tomatoes in juice, undrained
4 cups cooked, shredded chicken
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen or fresh white corn (canned doesn’t hold up as well in soup, and white is heartier)
Juice of 3 limes (or more, if your limes are stingy)
Garnishes:
Shredded cheddar and Monterey jack cheese (or pepper jack if you want more kick)
Chopped avocado
Sour cream
Crumbled tortilla chips
Heat oil in a very large stockpot and sauté onions and spices for about 5 minutes, until onions are just soft. Add garlic and sauté for an additional minute.
In a separate bowl, whisk the masa harina into 1 quart of broth until smooth (this will be thick like cream of wheat). Add the masa mix to the onions and bring to a boil. Boil, stirring constantly, for 2-3 minutes (this cooks the bitter taste out of the masa). Add remaining 2 ½ quarts broth to the pot, reserving the last ½ quart in case you need it at the end. Stir in the chicken and the tomatoes with their juice. Simmer for about 5-10 minutes.
Add the beans and corn. Heat until corn is thawed. If soup is too thick, add the remaining broth. Stir in the lime juice.
To serve, sprinkle some cheese in the bottom of a bowl, add soup on stop and stir to combine. Add avocado, sour cream, and tortilla bits as desired. Strangely enough, it's actually still really good without the cheese.
* I had to go to a Mexican tienda to find this. It is NOT regular corn meal. It is tortilla or tamale flour, which is corn flour mixed with lime (the chemical calcium hydroxide, not the citrus fruit). Why lime? Well, now it’s time for some mavinformationTM:
The maize that the ancient Mayans and Aztecs used is not like the super sweet corn we have in America today. (We have developed such a taste for sweetness that even our vegetables/grains/fruits have been bred for this characteristic – today’s corn has 2-4 TIMES the sugar as original corn). Their corn had bigger kernels and was white.
The skins of the kernels were undigestible and the nutrituion from the corn was largely unavailable to the body in this form, causing malnutrition and the disease called pallegra in societies that depended on corn as a main source of food.
The Mayans discovered that by mixing the maize with lime, it started a chemical process that broke down the kernels, making them digestible and also making the niacin in the corn available for the body (this is what prevents pallegra). Fresh maize was mixed with woodash (the residue from cooking fires) and water, cooked for a bit and then left to soak overnight. The lime broke down the skins and they floated to the surface where they were skimmed off. The maize was then drained and ground into a paste. This process is also called nixtamalization. Apparently the nixtamalization is not required when powerful mills are used (such as in industrialized nations), but it is necessary when grinding corn by hand.
How on earth did these ancient peoples figure out that woodash from their cooking fires was the secret to beating malnutrion? THAT I cannot find the answer to. I thought that the first time I read found this information (however many years ago), I learned that corn mixed in a certain place was toxic, but mixed in another was okay to eat. The corn from the edible had lime naturally occurring in it from cave formations dripping into the water and eventually the Mayans figured out the lime water was the secret. However, I can’t find the source of that information, so take it with a grain of salt. Salt is always good on tortillas.
