Best Sopa Azteca Ever...aka Tortilla Soup

Tortilla soup is one of those things that I almost have to order when I see it on a restaurant menu. I have no idea why, but the concept of it always sounds good to me. Inevitably I am almost always let down and I really have no idea why I continue to order it. When I saw Ourcookquest send a tweet out with a link to Rick Bayless's recipe for Sopa Azteca...aka Tortilla Soup, I knew I had to make it.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rick Bayless, he is a James Beard award-winning chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and television personality as the winner of Top Chef Masters as well as the host of "Mexico - One Plate at a Time". His restaurants in Chicago are some of my favorites in the country. Frontera Grill and Topolobampo have been around since the 1980's and still have a line out the door every day of the week. His latest creation, XOCO, might be my favorite one yet.

But I digress, back to the Sopa Azteca....Here's the link to Rick Bayless's official Sopa Azteca recipe. I didn't follow it exactly so continue on to how I made the best tortilla soup I've ever tasted. It just happened to also be one of the easiest soups I've ever made.

My rendition of Rick Bayless's Sopa Azteca

Ingredients    * means see cook's notes.at the end of the recipe

1 large dried New Mexico chile, stemmed and seeded *
1 dried chipotle chile, stemmed and seeded *
One 15-ounce can pureed tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, sliced 1/4-inch thick
5 garlic cloves, peeled & smashed
2 quarts smoked turkey stock, homemade
1 pound shredded turkey leftover from Thanksgiving * 

For garnishing
1 large ripe avocado, pitted, flesh scooped from the skin and cut into 1/4-inch cubes
Your cheese of choice, shredded (e.g. Mexican melting cheese like Chihuahua, quesadilla or asadero), to taste
Roughly broken tortilla chips, to taste
1/2 cup Mexican crema, sour cream or creme fraîche for garnish (I skipped this)
1 large lime, cut into 6 wedges, for serving (I skipped this but wish I would have tried it)

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic once the oil is hot and cook until caramelized, about 7 minutes.

While the onions are cooking, lightly toast the chilis over the flame of your gas stove or in a pan on your electric stove. Don't be afraid to get it in the flame, that charring adds good flavor depth to the soup. Once the chilis are toasted, break them into small pieces and put them in a blender along with the tomatoes. Once the onions and garlic have caramelized, add them to the blender and process until everything is completely smooth*. 

Return this mixture to the pan over high heat and cook until it is the consistency of tomato paste. Add the turkey stock and simmer the mixture for 15 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, garnish each bowl with tortilla chips, avocado, and cheese.

Just before serving, add the turkey meat to the soup, taste and season with salt and pepper, if necessary.

Fill each bowl with soup and serve with sour cream, lime, and additional tortilla chips on the side.

Enjoy!


Cooks Notes
* See the comments in Rick's recipe if you don't have dried chilies - chili powder can be substituted - or better yet, head to your local spice vendor and pick up some fresh dried chili's. My favorite spice vendor in Cleveland is Spice Hound
* You can use chicken stock instead of turkey, but good quality stock is very important. Don't waste your time or money on the stuff they sell at the grocery store - use water instead if you don't have homemade stock
* Chicken or any other meat can be substituted for turkey
* To ensure an amazing, velvety texture, I highly recommend using a Vita Mix blender. Using a lessor blender, you are likely to leave some larger chunks of the chili pepper that are not appealing to eat.

Butternut Squash Soup

I will be doing a review of a kitchen gadget soon, compliments of CSN Stores. In return for plugging their website selling a wide variety of dining tables and other dining room furniture, they are giving me $55 towards the purchase of anything from any of CSN's 200+ stores. What should I get???

Has it really been more than a month since I last blogged? I tell you what, I don't know my favorite bloggers have time to cook, blog multiple times per week, spend time with their family and friends, and maintain a full time job. Major props go out to all of them.

I love reading Michael Ruhlman's blog. He posts frequently and I get more cooking tips and tricks from him than just about anyone else. His post today inspired me to make butternut squash soup. I frequently make butternut squash soup but I typically use a recipe that takes more than an hour to prepare and has a long list of ingredients. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious, but lately I've been more about efficiency & simplicity in cooking rather than elaborate preparations.

Following Ruhlman's idea, I started off by dicing a large butternut squash and a bunch of cloves of garlic from our Plum Creek Farm CSA.

No, that's not cantelope, it's butternut squash

I sauteed the squash in butter in batches, making sure not to over crowd the pan. When each batch was about half way done, I added some of the minced garlic and seasoned everything with salt.

Once all the squash was done, I added it to a soup pan and covered it with 3 cups of homemade chicken stock (don't bother with the store bought stuff, use water if you don't have homemade stock). I simmered this mixture for about 20 minutes and then added it to my Vita Mix blender. Once it was velvety smooth, I tasted it and seasoned it with salt and some fresh sage and thyme, also from Plum Creek Farm.

I didn't use cream, butter or anything else to finish the soup. The soup was delicious enough with out it so I decided to keep it healthy, and let the flavors of the butternut squash and homemade stock shine.

Check back again soon as I'm working on a post about Iron Chef Michael Symon's Braised Pork Belly and will have a give away to an awesome foodie / charity event Both posts should be up this week!

Spicy Tomato and Blue Cheese Soup (p. 56)

Wow, the last month has been a whirlwind! I spent 9 days in Nashville for work & to visit with my wife's family, had a wonderful Christmas with my family, attended a friends wedding on New Year's Eve, went to a couple of Browns victories, threw a party for the Buckeyes big Rose Bowl victory, and caught up with lots of friends that were in town for the holiday's.

Phew, I need a vacation to get caught up on everything! Seriously. I am writing this post from a hotel room in Newark, NJ before we head to Saint Martin in the morning. My wife Beth, daughter Isabel and I are spending the next 12 nights relaxing on the the beach, scuba diving, and enjoying the fine French cuisine of Saint Martin. YES!!! I hope to have a good internet connection down there as well because, lucky for you, I also spent a lot of time cooking over the past few weeks. I made 4 dishes from Live to Cook for my family on Christmas & Christmas Eve, actually 5 but I didn't photograph the mac & cheese I made at my inlaws house so I guess I'll have to make it again.

Every year that we spend Christmas in Cleveland we celebrate Christmas Eve with my Dad's side of the family and spend Christmas Day with my Mom's. My Dad & his wife Michelle hosted us in their lovely home this year and made a delicious standing rib roast with creamy scalloped potatoes. I was asked to bring a side dish or vegetable so I decided to do a little of both and bring Michael Symon's Spicy Tomato and Blue Cheese Soup from p. 56 of Live to Cook to kick off our meal along with some delicious bread from Blackbird Baking Company in Lakewood.

I love to make soup. I make a pot every week or two once the weather turns cool. I find them so easy to make, delicious, and nutritious when you use homemade stock and fresh ingredients. This soup is very quick and easy to make. It has been a staple on Michael Symon's restaurant menus going back to his time at Players twenty years ago. Over the past couple of years I've seen it on the menu at Symon's restaurants Bar Symon, Lola, Lolita, & B Spot. I've seen the recipe posted numerous places on the web and many blogs written about it. I've probably made this soup at least 5 times before receiving the book, although I made it a little differently than the recipe in the book. So, what are you waiting for? If you haven't tried this soup, pick up the ingredients at your local grocery store or stop by one of Symon's restaurants & give it a try. Below is my most recent attempt at making it.

All the ingredients

Symon writes that the key to this soup is using San Marzano tomatoes. San Marzano tomatoes, often regarded as the best sauce tomatoes on the planet, are plum tomatoes grown in the volcanic soil of San Marzano, Italy. Their high quality and the fact that they are readily available in the canned section of your grocery store means this soup can be made year round.

The book calls for Roth Kase buttermilk blue cheese. My Heinen's did not have it when I was shopping so I decided to try the Roth Kase Moody Blue, a rich, creamy blue delicately smoked over fruit wood to create subtle smoky undertones with hints of roasted nuts and coffee. I thought the combination of spicy from the Sriracha and smokey from the cheese would play well together - I was right!

The chicken stock in the picture is homemade. If you don't have time to make homemade (it's really easy to do, try it!), I would recommend buying a good quality stock from a place like The Souper Market or even using water as suggested by Michael Ruhlman and many other chefs before using the stuff in a can at the grocery store.

 

Red onion & garlic sweating

I started by sweating some red onion & garlic in one of my soup pots.

 

Starting to look like soup

After the onion & garlic were soft & translucent, probably 5 minutes or so, I added the chicken stock, tomatoes, and their juice and brought it to a simmer. 

 

Getting creamy

Next I added the cream, sriracha, & oregano and allowed the mixture to simmer for 45 minutes or so.

 

Velvety smooth after a spin in the Vita Mix

Right before we were ready to leave for our Christmas Eve church service, I carefully poured the soup into my Vita Mix, added the cheese, and pureed it until it was smooth as velvet. The book says to run the soup through a fine mesh strainer. I did not do that and would not recommend it if you have a Vita Mix or other top of the line blender. I think the goal is to make sure any seeds or anything else that did not get pureed are removed from the soup. Prior to getting my Vita Mix I would use a stick blender and still did not strain it. The soup was not nearly as smooth as when I used my Vita Mix, but it still tasted just as good.

 

The final plating with a little extra blue cheese & Blackbird Baking Company French Epi

When we arrived at my Dad's house I poured the soup back into a pot and slowly warmed it on the stove. It traveled very well. I didn't read the number of servings the soup made until right before we left our house. The recipe said it served 4-6 people. We had 12 people for our dinner. Uh, oh. Fortunately a couple of the kids said they didn't want any and I was able to stretch it out so 10 adults / teens all got a two ladle bowl of soup and I even got to take home enough to have a bowl a couple days later. Almost everyone, even my 85 year old Grandma and a couple of the kids, loved the soup.

This soup is SOOOO good and extremely easy to make. If you are thinking about making one of Michael Symon's dishes, this is definitely a good one to start with.

One more piece of advice. Because the soup was for a large audience, including some kids, I cut back the amount of sriracha to about a tablespoon & a half from the recommended 2 tablespoons. I love heat, but even after reducing the sriracha it was still nice & spicy. If you are not a big fan of heat, I would suggest reducing the sriracha even more.

Cost
I will provide the approximate cost for each recipe in the book, as well as the source of the products used.

It cost approximately $13.28 to make Spicy Tomato and Blue Cheese Soup. The cost broke down as follows:
Red Onion - $1
San Marzano Tomatoes - $4.69
Chicken Stock - $1 (homemade)
Roth Case Moody Blue Cheese - $5.59
Misc (olive oil, salt, garlic, siracha, fresh oregano) - $1

Unless otherwise noted, all ingredients for this dish came from Heinen's 

Nutritional information:
I am not a nutrition expert but I will provide some information about the key ingredient of each dish.

There are many health benefits to eating tomatoes. Tomatoes contain compounds that have been proven to help prevent cancer, heart disease cataracts and many others. Lycopene, a carotenoid found in tomatoes, has been extensively studied for its antioxidant and cancer-preventing properties. The antioxidant function of lycopene-its ability to help protect cells and other structures in the body from oxygen damage-has been linked in human research to the protection of DNA (our genetic material) inside of white blood cells. Prevention of heart disease has been shown to be another antioxidant role played by lycopene. Lycopene has been found to help prevent cancers such as colorectal, prostate, breast, endometrial, lung, and pancreatic cancers.

Tomatoes are also a good source of vitamin A & C.