Chicken Tortilla Soup

Lots of work todo with much creative payoff. And yes, he will be an obstacle today.

A clean up of an old post.

Tortilla soup is a spicy take on chicken soup to which adding sour cream, fried strips of tortilla and cheese enhances the flavor at serving time. The base of this soup uses premade spice mixes to add an extra dimension of flavor to the soup and keeping the soup easy to prepare. This warm dish will be wonderful on any cold day.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup Lemon Juice
  • 4 Chicken Breasts
  • 1/2 lb Cheddar Cheese
  • 3 Large Tortillas
  • 2 cans Chicken Broth
  • 2 Avocados, diced
  • 3 tbs butter, softened
  • 1 can Green Chilies, diced
  • 1 can Black beans
  • 1 Can Hominy
  • 1/8 tsp Chipotle Chili Powder
  • Taco Seasoning Packet
  • Ranch Seasoning Packet
  • Sour Cream

In a crock-pot, combine Ranch, Taco Seasoning, Chili powder, hominy, black beans, chilies, chicken broth, 1/8 cup lemon juice and avocados. Turn on low. This will help dissolve the spices dissolve as you stir. Stir until spices dissolve.

Fry chicken on medium heat in remaining lemon juice until white all the way through. Shred the chicken and place it in a crock-pot. Turn crock-pot to high for 3 hours. Stir Occasionally.

Slice tortillas in a lattice pattern. Fry in butter until crisp. Put aside.

Shred cheese. Put aside.

After 3 hours place soup in bowls. Top with tortillas, sour cream and cheese. Serves ~8

Variations: Add fresh tomatoes. For less spicy taste, omit chilies and chili powder.

Kitchen Scratch Quesadilla

So due to the broken cupboard, dishes litter our stove, freezer, and counter space. This also happens to be a week with little to no leftovers or easy heat ups. J. got us a rotisserie chicken earlier in the week, but I’m about chickened out.

So I feel hungry for something else. This is what I pulled out:

2 slices of sharp cheddar

2 slices of Dubliner cheese

Herdez Salsa Verde (the pantry shelf buckled too…but this managed to stay on the shelf.

Lemon Juice

Ms. Dash Fiesta Lime (chili powder and lime powder basically)

Whipping Cream

Tortillas, Flour

Chicken, precooked, in this case rotisserie

Shred chicken. Put cheese, chicken, a splash of lemon juice and salsa on a tortilla. Fry or nuke in the microwave. Hint: it’s better pan fried. Sprinkle Dash over the top and drizzle with whipping cream.

Lime Chicken and Tarragon Cream Cheese Wontons

This is my third wonton recipe. It’s snowing out today but not sticking. So I thought I’d pound this out.

6-7 frozen chicken tenders
1 lime
1 small squeeze bottle lime juice
Package of fresh tarragon
1 block cream cheese
Jar of sundried tomatoes
1 package of wonton wrappers
Balsamic Vinegar
Olive Oil

Place the frozen chicken in a frying pan on medium. Drown in a small bottle of lime juice. The chicken will remain white to slightly tan but cook through. Turn to cook evenly. When cooked through, shred the chicken.

Put the cream cheese in a bowl. Place one tarragon branch to the side. Remove leaves from the rest of the branches. Wash and chop them. Mix the leaves into the cream cheese. Add the zest of one lime to the cream cheese. Cover in plastic and let sit over night.

The next morning, slice the sundried tomatoes into strips.

Stuff the wontons with a bit of cream cheese, chicken and one strip of tomato. To close, wet your fingers and touch all four corners. Fold the corners over themselves to form a little packet. I like this way better than the pinch method because they are easier to eat when fried.

Heat olive oil in a frying pan. Fried the wantons until golden four at a time.

Chicken Bell Pepper Casserole

3 bell peppers, any color, cleaned and halved.
4 chicken breasts marinated in a lemon pepper sauce, chopped
6 pats of butter
salt, pepper, chipotle sauce, dried chipotle pepper (powder or crushed), lemon pepper
1 can of chopped tomatoes with no sugar added
1 cup shredded Gouda
1 tblsp Garlic, chopped
1 tblsp Parmesan grated powder
1 cup sour cream

Place halves of peppers in the bottom of a casserole dish with the inside facing up. Place a pat of butter in each one, dust on salt an pepper.

In a separate bowl, mix chicken, cheese, garlic, and tomatoes. Add a little salt and pepper. Spread mixture over peppers, making sure to tuck it into each pepper.

In another bowl (yet again separate), mix sour cream, chipotle sauce, lemon pepper, and dried chipotle to taste. Spread mixture over chicken stuff.

Preheat oven to 425F Cook for 1hour & 20 min check on it every twenty to thirty minutes. Top should brown, pepper flesh should be soft and chicken should be cooked through…it’s okay to mix it a bit to check the chicken…but try not to do it too much.

Probably good on rice…I can’t have rice.

Labor Day Weekend ’08

So this weekend was Tacticon. Three of my games went off. It looks like the Vampire Hunters left Kilkore and the crew of the Winding Leaf added to the their list of felonies three-fold. It’s definitely a complete weekend when some one groans, “Oh I remember this moral dilemma, thanks.”It is an interesting social experiment how often gamers will choose to break the law for the greater good at the gaming table. I wonder how that translates in real life.

I got to play 4th ed. It plays like a video game, which was no surprise. It was fun, if totally combat oriented. In fact the rogue I played wasn’t good at much of anything but combat. For the first time in playing a 1st level rogue being hit with 22 hp of damage I got to yell, “I’m still alive!” And so the game progressed. I took over 100 hp of damage total and lived the majority of the night through it. It was great.

But it’s not DnD. It just isn’t. The names are there but it doesn’t work with the same flow as 1st, 2nd or 3rd ed. It is fun, it’s not the same. I can safely say no LFR for me, but I’ll play the classics as they’re offered.

I did finish chapter 13, and I’ve got a good deal done on chapter 21. Things are flying now and that eee PC is just great for this.

On Monday I finally removed that wallpaper. It took all of 20 minutes. I got the bed broke down and half the room cleaned out. Goal: by the end of the week be ready to dedicate the space. Woot! Of course it turns out that the wall is a different color under the wallpaper. Go them. I’ll have to think on solutions to this.

I also made Chicken stock. Clean-out-your-fridge chicken stock is easy. You need a half eaten whole chicken…mine was lemon pepper flavored, carrots, potatoes, peas, perl onions, garlic, cumin, curry, bay leaves, thyme, savory, salt, pepper, some Mrs Dash, water, whisky, vodka, white wine, liquid smoke, red pepper and two bullion cubes. Then boil the hell out of it for 3 hours or until it tastes good. Then remove all solid matter, feed the carrots and some of the potatoes to the dogs, the rest get’s composted but you can eat it all (except the bones) if you’re not on a diet. And you have chicken stock…num.

What else? That’s mostly it right now. I have web page stuff to do and more writing.