Chicken Tortilla Soup - Or is it?

Hello, Lovlies. I had a hankering for chicken tortilla soup recently. I've only ever had it once, so I'm not sure why, but what the heck. Live dangerously, make a mess in the kitchen, cook up a big batch of chicken tortilla soup. *snickers*

"Chicken" Tortilla Soup

1 T olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 poblano pepper, diced
1 can of Rotel
1 can of fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 T garlic powder
1 T chili powder
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1/2 ground cumin or 1 t cumin seeds
1/2 t ancho chili powder
1 t salt
1 quart of broth
1 t corn meal, stir in to half a cup of water to make a slurry
1 pound cooked chicken breast - use pre-cooked rotisserie chicken to save time
2 corn tortillas, sliced in to strips

Toppings: diced avocado, cilantro, shredded cheese, tortilla strips (optional), squeeze of lime

Heat the olive in a dutch oven over medium high heat. Stir in the onion, celery, carrots and pepper.

Cook for about 5 minutes until slightly softened. Add in all of the spices, Rotel, and fire roasted tomatoes. Stir to combine and add the broth or stock. Bring to a boil, lower heat and cook for 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft. (I used my immersion blender to puree the veggies so they weren't completely chunky.) Next, add in the cornmeal slurry. Since I'm not using corn kernels in the soup, this will add a hint of corn flavor.

When the vegetables are soft, add in the tortilla strips (they help thicken the soup), and then add in the chicken .

April Fool's! I didn't use chicken. I used 2 cans of jackfruit instead of chicken. ;) Use jackfruit in brine, not syrup. Add to the soup and cook until tender, about 30 minutes.

It's spicy, warming, and delicious.  It just happens to be vegetarian. Top with diced avocado, cilantro, shredded cheese, and a squeeze of lime. Enjoy.

Sweet Potato Quiche - an inspired post...

A Few days ago, my favorite Hotass posted a link to a video recipe. A recipe that was for quiche, but used very thinly sliced sweet potato slices layered to make the crust. One kitchen gadget that I have that I don't use as much as I should is my mandoline. The Aussie got it for me for my birthday several years back, and it makes the best thin sliced anything. Including fingers, but that's another story. Speaking of stories, this post is actually inspired by a person called North, who loves healthy eating. ;)

I pretty much always have sweet potatoes on hand, so I decided that this would be a great recipe to make for lunch. To make this, you'll need the following:

1 large sweet potato, peeled and very thinly sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 bag of baby greens (kale, spinach, etc)
2 ounces shredded cheese (I used an alpine style that I had on hand)
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
spices: salt, pepper, garlic powder, nutmeg, cayenne
cooking spray
olive oil

Thinly slice a large sweet potato. Spray your pie pan with quick release spray, and layer the slices on the bottom and sides of the pan. Cut slices in half to form the side layer. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

While the crust bakes, drizzle some olive oil in to a hot pan. Toss in a thinly sliced onion (I had half of a very large onion in the refrigerator). Cook over medium high heat for about 5 minutes until the onion softens. Next, add in several handfuls of greens. The video used half of a bag of baby spinach. I am not a fan of spinach these days (it makes a squeaky feeling on my teeth when I eat it) so I used a package of baby kale. In hindsight, I would chop the baby kale in to small pieces to make cutting the pie easier. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until the greens are wilted. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a pinch of nutmeg.

In a bowl, whisk together 4 eggs and half a cup of milk. Add in 1/2 t of salt, several grinds of black pepper (I love black pepper, so I used a lot of it), and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

Layer the greens and onions in the pie shell, distributing fairly evenly.
 

Top the greens with 2 ounces of shredded cheese.

 Pour the egg mixture over the greens and cheese. Bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees.

Slice and enjoy!

Chicken and Israeli Couscous Soup

The other evening I was browsing through Pinterest. This may come as a shocker, but I rarely go on Pinterest anymore. Their promoted pins and picked for you pins are so annoying. I rarely see anything my friends have pinned because of them. To my surprise, I saw a picture of a delicious looking soup made with pearl, or Israeli, couscous, chicken, and all sorts of good aromatics and spices. (I can't even write the word couscous without pronouncing it like Kahmunrah in Night At The Museum 2) The recipe was posted in full, but I tracked back to the original post at this blog. It's called "cold-fighting couscous chicken soup." I don't have a cold (knock on wood), but it sounded so good that I had to make some on this chilly (for Texas) rainy fall day, with a few tweaks. I used my pressure cooker, but this would be super easy on the stove top. (note: the aromatic pastes I use are the brand Gourmet Garden)

Chicken and Israeli Couscous Soup

1 small onion (or half a large) finely chopped

1 leek, white and light green parts, chopped (I quarter it to rinse, then chop)

2 carrots, sliced

1 rib celery, chopped

1 T garlic paste 

1 T ginger paste

1 T lemongrass paste

1 t chili paste or crushed red pepper flakes

1 t parsley paste

1 t turmeric

1 8.8 oz bag of Israeli couscous

1 boneless chicken breast, diced in small bite sized pieces

4 + cups chicken stock (I used one carton and it made a very thick soup)

1 t TrueLemon (or juice from half a lemon)

1 t TrueLime

1 t chicken base (it's like chicken stock concentrate - I used it instead of salt) or salt to taste

Set your pressure cooker to saute, drizzle some olive or canola oil in, and add your onion, carrots, celery and leeks. I let them soften for a couple of minutes while I was cutting up my chicken breast. Stir in the garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chili and parsley pastes, followed by the turmeric. Add the couscous, stir to coat with the herbs and spices. At this point, cancel from saute mode so that everything doesn't get too hot and scorch. Next, add in the chicken, chicken stock, lemon/lime juice or the True Lemon/Lime crystals (I love the convenience of these crystals) and the spoonful of chicken base or salt if you're using. Place the lid on your cooker, close up, and move the vent knob to seal. Set on high pressure for 5 minutes. Vent with quick release method when timer goes off.

Enjoy!

BBQ Jackfruit Burrito

I recently my friend Galga Runner posted a link to an article about 21 food things only a San Franciscan would understand. The cover picture to the article was a humongous, gorgeous burrito, overflowing with fillings. The picture made me drool. It also made me want a burrito. Now. While I do live in Texas, I rarely go out for Tex-Mex food. The closest taco place is, in my opinion, no bueno. In a similar manner that I feel perverse pride in never having eaten a Krispy Kreme doughnut, I feel that same strange pride that I have never been to Chipotle. What's a girl to do? Raid the pantry.

Beans of some sort? Check. Rice? Leftover in the freezer, check. Avocado? Half of one in the fridge, check. Something meaty and BBQ-like? *stops short while sifting through my mind palace* Nope. Much to The Aussie's dismay, I've started eating a LOT less meat. What to use? Then I remembered. I have a can of jackfruit in the pantry. I bought it a while ago after hearing about jackfruit being used as a meat alternative because it cooks down and shreds like pulled pork. Why the heck not. I grabbed the can, my bottle of BBQ sauce, a few other goodies and got cooking.

Irony of all ironies, I didn't have any flour tortillas in the freezer so I had to run out and get some. Oh, and I forgot to use the avocado too.

BBQ Jackfruit Burrito

1 can of jackfruit (packed in water not syrup) drained, and roughly chopped
~ 1/2 cup BBQ sauce
2 T ketchup
dash of liquid smoke
1 t chili powder
1 t garlic powder

In a pan over medium heat, lightly saute the jackfruit. Pour in the BBQ sauce and ketchup, stirring to coat the jackfruit. Add a little water if it's too thick. Add the spices, stir, cover and reduce heat. Simmer until soft, stirring occasionally. This took about 30 minutes. When it was soft, I mashed it with my potato masher. It really does look like pulled pork!

While the jackfruit was cooking, I sliced up half of a bell pepper and half of an onion and sauteed until soft. Since my pressure cooker was busy, I opened a can of pinto beans (I used the kind with jalapeno) and heated them up along with the brown rice and some corn I had in the freezer. The slaw topping I used is the veggies from an Asian chopped salad kit I got at Costco and some coleslaw dressing. The cilantro and crunch of the cabbage really added to the burrito.

I have never made anything like this, but I will again. It was filling and delicious. I was so excited to eat it that I forgot the avocado and cheese. It didn't need it. Yum.

Easy Coconut Seafood Curry Soup

One of the real pluses to working from home, aside from having the critters with me all day and wearing pajamas yoga pants every day whenever I want, is being able to cook whatever I feel like for lunch if I have the ingredients on hand. Today I started thinking about seafood. After a bit of rummaging around in the freezer, I found the last bag of mixed seafood. I buy the huge bag from Costco and then divide it in to smaller portions that are easier to store in my freezer. Also in the freezer were some individually wrapped portions of cod, some frozen homemade chicken stock and a bag of stir fry vegetables. From the pantry came a can of lite coconut milk, cloves of garlic and an onion, from the refrigerator came half a can of mushrooms that were leftover from last night, a quarter of a tomato, half an orange bell pepper, and red curry paste. (Note: When I was done cooking, I added a splash of rice vinegar, soy sauce, a squeeze of lime and snipped in some Thai basil that is growing in my aero garden)

Since I am all about the gadgets, I pulled out my Instant Pot (don't tell the Cuisinart PC that I brought this back from the ranch) and set it to saute and drizzled in a little oil. While it was heating up, I thawed the chicken stock in the microwave and sliced up  half of an onion in to half moons (lengthwise strips). In to the cooker they went to soften. Next, I sliced the pepper in to thin strips, sliced the garlic, and tossed them in to cook. I had a good rounded spoonful of curry paste left in my jar, so I spooned it in, stirring it in to the veggies. I cancelled the saute mode, and literally dumped in my frozen stir fry veggies, the mushrooms and tomato, the frozen seafood mix (there was about two cups worth in my bag), two frozen cod fillets, 1 cup and a half of chicken stock and the can of coconut milk. I closed the lid to the IP, set it to high pressure for 5 minutes and walked away. In hindsight, I could have done a little less time, but the fish fillets were thick and I wanted to make sure they were cooked through.

Here it is just before closing the pot. It could have been an epic failure. Since I don't often use recipe, I just never know if something will turn out as well as I think it will. For the most part they do, but cooking with a pressure cooker adds a level of unknown if I've never made something before.

When I was releasing the steam I could smell the aroma of seafood, and it smelled good. Fingers were crossed. There was some splatter on the inside of the pot, but the soup looked great. The fish was cooked beautifully, and so was the calamari. Shrimp are easy to over cook, but I didn't mind so much since they were small. The frozen veggies were soft, but that was to be expected, and helped make the soup soft and soothing. Since shrimp can be salty, I didn't add any salt in the beginning. I tasted the soup, added a splash of soy sauce, a splash of rice vinegar, a squeeze of lime juice (I couldn't find my TrueLime because it was sitting on my desk next to my water glass), and snipped in some Thai basil leaves. I am so please with how this turned out. If you were cooking on the stove, you could add the shrimp last so they aren't over cooked, but I just wanted to see how it would turn out if I basically dumped everything in and set it to cook. It didn't disappoint.

Easy Vegetable and Seafood Paella

It's no secret that my husband is a picky eater. I cook a lot of dishes that he has no interest in eating. Luckily, I have the opportunity to cook dishes that I'm interested in eating during my lunch hour.  I have also been trying to cook from my pantry and freezer so that I use things up before shopping for more. Yesterday I spied a bag of mixed seafood in the freezer. Usually I make bouillabaisse, but I didn't want to make that for lunch. I rummaged through the pantry and decided that I would try to make paella. Since I'm trying to cut back on eating meat, I wanted to make it a vegetable and seafood paella. I also wanted to use up a bunch of veggies I had in the not-so-crisper drawer. I know that I totally did things out of order, but hey, it worked. :) Some will say it isn't a true paella if it isn't made with chicken, or with sausage. Oh well. I will go with my version of paella today and enjoy it.

Vegetable and Mixed Seafood "Paella"

2 T olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms (4 really large baby bellas)
1 cup arborio rice
1/4 c white wine
1 orange bell pepper cut in thin strips (use what ever color you have on hand)
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1 can artichoke heart quarters, drained
2 cups frozen mixed seafood (shrimp, calamari, mussels, scallops)
2 cups broth
1 small pinch saffron
1 t smoked paprika
1 T garlic powder
1/2 t salt

Heat a large, heavy bottomed pan over medium high heat. When pan is hot, drizzle in the olive oil. After a minute the oil should shimmer. Add your diced onion and stir around. Cook until softened, about 2 minutes, then add in the garlic. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to make sure the garlic doesn't burn. At this point, I should probably have added the rice, but I didn't, I added the mushrooms. Feel free to do it in reverse order. I added the mushrooms and then the rice. Stir the rice to make sure it gets a light coating of the olive oil, and cook for about 5 minutes. Next, I de-glazed the pan with the white wine, stirring to scrape up any bits on the bottom of the pan. Stir in the bell pepper, diced tomatoes, artichoke hearts and the seafood. Pour in the broth and the spices, mixing everything together so that the broth is distributed evenly.

Turn down the heat to low and cover. I set the timer for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes, I stirred the mixture to make sure the seafood was cooking evenly, covered it up and set for another 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I removed the lid, stirred again, raised the heat to medium to cook off excess liquid for a few minutes.  Before serving, check your seasoning and remove any mussels that didn't open.

I have a confession to make. For lunch, hot, it was delicious. For leftovers cold, it was even more delicious. When I was packaging the leftovers later I was eating more. Then I spied the muffaletta olive salad in my fridge. This is a mixture of marinated olive pieces, carrot, small bits of cauliflower that I get at the antipasto bar at Kroger. I've made "Spanish" dishes that had olives in it, why not this. So I spooned some in to my bowl with the cold paella. It was absolutely delicious. It added just the right briny kick to the dish.  Perfect. My second confession. I just had cold paella for breakfast. I'm a happy girl.

Messy Meatballs

The other day, I saw a picture of some breakfast meatballs on the ever changing Book Of Face. I frequently eat leftovers for breakfast, so the idea of breakfast meatballs appealed to me. If you think about it, meatballs have the potential to be the perfect eat at your desk finger food. Since I already had breakfast, I set about to make these lunch meatballs. During my lunch hour, too. Perfect. The original recipe called for shredding and then re-shredding the sweet potato in your food processor, followed by the onion, followed by the mushrooms... Ain't nobody got time for that. I'd be starving until next week. I remembered what the demo guy at Costco said about using a Vitamix to finely chop veggies (You add a lot of water, blend them, then drain), so I tried it. It worked really well. To a point. I really should have drained the veggies longer. The mixture was really moist (I hate that word) so I added in two whisked eggs as binder. Hmm. Still to wet. What absorbs liquids. Ding ding ding. Chia seeds. So I have extra goodness in the form of chia. And they tasted really good, too. Win-win-win.

Messy Yummy Meatballs

1 sweet potato, finely grated
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup mushrooms, finely chopped
2 cups baby spinach, blended
3 Italian sausage links (mine were mild), removed from casings
1/2 pound lean ground pork
6 slices of bacon, cooked very crisp, crumbled
2 eggs, whisked
1/4 cup of chia seeds
1 T garlic powder
1 T Worcestershire Sauce

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cook the bacon strips until they're super crisp. Crumble and set aside.

Next, shred-chop-blend the peeled sweet potato, onion, mushrooms and spinach. I blend-chopped and drained the peeled sweet potato, the onion, the mushrooms and the spinach, then combined them in a large bowl.

Next, add in the sausage and the ground pork, mixing well. Whisk the eggs and work in to the sausage and veggie mixture. Mix in the chia seeds, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce and the bacon crumbles.  

Form in to 1 1/2 inch meatballs and place on a foil covered baking sheet. You may like to spray with non-stick cooking spray to make removal easier.  Bake the little yummies for 30 minutes. 

I didn't bake up the entire mixture, but I plugged the recipe in to my My Fitness Pal account so that I could track lunch. Estimating that the entire batch would make 8 servings, the per-serving nutrition comes out to 261 calories, 12 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of fat, 16 grams of protein, 390 grams of sodium, and 4 grams of fiber.


Enjoy!