BEST COOKER

"I Made This.........56"

A very drunk customer from Dallas, Texas, told me today the following....

"Mexicans don't put corn in their chicken tortilla soup".

"It is creamy, not brothy. It is not authentic".

Brilliant even while drunk, and this was after he had ordered three bowls of it. Hmmm....

This is MY version. It bears little resemblance to "traditional" chicken tortilla soup, although I sometimes wonder if anyone in Mexico actually makes chicken tortilla soup. You know how Americans love to bastardize any other countries cuisine. Being the All-American lad I am, I turned this one on it's head and made it something else. I have had several people tell me it is the best soup they have ever eaten...period. And I did win a soup contest with it, so here is the recipe. It is the version I make at work. For home use, you will want to cut it down to size. This makes about two gallons of soup.

8 chicken breast halves, cooked, shredded and roughly chopped.

2 cups canned diced green chilis

2 cups diced red pimientos, drained

4 tablespoons minced garlic

4 cups chicken stock

4 quarts heavy whipping cream

3 cups diced red onion

3 cups black beans

1 cup chili powder

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1 tablespoon oregano

1 tablespoon cumin

4 cups corn, drained

3 tablespoons chicken base.

Mix it all together, cook for about 45 minutes. In a small bowl, mix some cornstarch and cold water. SLOWLY add some of the cornstarch slurry to the soup, whisking constantly. The heavy whipping cream has a high fat content and so it does not need a lot of thickener to go from creamy to wallpaper paste. When it is the right consistency, remove from the heat.

Cut tortillas in strips, fry in hot oil, and use as a topping.

I had not made this soup in almost a year. When a few of the servers saw it on the marker board as the soup of the day, they informed me that customer have been asking for it for a long time, and several said it was the best soup they had ever had. Huh!!!??? And this is the first I am hearing this?? Oh, how I love the disconnect between the front of the house, and the back of the house.

Enjoy!

Anxiety and
Stomach aches, cause longing for
Some good home cooking.


Sadly, this was not from today. But I found myself thinking about this meal from a few weeks ago as I battled hunger, the lightest nausea, and general physical discomfort all day. Maybe it's the tetanus shot (which ached all through the night and continues to this very moment), though it more likely an extension of my previous ailments.

The doctor prescribed Prilosec, to see if perhaps there some kind of acid reflux thing that's causing my anxiety... but since getting the filled this afternoon, I've done some reading and am suddenly worried about side-effects. Do you know how many people are having a really rough time with acid-reflux on the internet? A LOT. But maybe I should just try it for a few days and see what happens... though there are some posts where people claimed that even after they stopped taking it, they were still having side-effects... then again, some of those people sounded a little crazy to begin with.

God I feel so neurotic. And not in a good way.

Speaking of neurotic in a good way, just learned that Woody Allen is a Sagittarius. Well that was unexpected.

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