Leftover Tortilla Soup Enchiladas
April 7, 2011 § 3 Comments
Last night we decided to continue our Mexican theme with some tortilla soup. Now, I should probably go ahead and say while this blog is young that I love meat. I’m not just talking “I enjoy a steak” love meat. I mean “Eat a rotisserie chicken for dinner then feel content at the fact that I just ate an entire animal” love meat. “Impale strip steak on a stick, hold it in a bonfire for 15 seconds, then stagger away with it into the night” love meat. “Robert Bly beating drums shirtless in the woods” love meat. So while Kelly does as well but isn’t as keen on, say, bare-handed tearing apart a chicken carcass, I, “meat man,” usually end up having to wash up to my elbows like a surgeon by the time I’ve finished gleefully scavenging. And yes, I find all the meat. So it was with great pleasure that I met her suggestion that we pick up a whole roaster while we were out running errands.
This post isn’t about the soup, and I was too slippery with chicken to document it anyway, but since it is a major component of the leftover dish at hand, I’ll give a flyover. We covered the chicken with paprika, chili power, salt, pepper, and some Kansas City Cowtown All Purpose Barbecue Seasoning, given to us by my awesome sister when we stopped at her digs in K.C. on the move up here from Texas. We double-checked Ruhlman’s “World’s Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe” because neither of us can ever be bothered to remember times or temperatures for the basic shit, then got the oven pre-heating. Ruhlman, you’ll notice, says to put a lemon up the chicken-cavity, but since we were going Mexican we went with a lime. [Recently-learned protip from Jamie Oliver: boil the lime/lemon for a while to get it hot, then stab it a few times before shoving it up the chicken. It'll start giving off steam quicker, flavoring and cooking the bird from the inside, too, rather than doing so in just the last ten minutes like it would if you started with a cold lime shoved in.]
Once the hour had passed I tore that chicken up and dumped the carcass into a stock pot, where Kelly covered it with water and did all manner of things. Not sure quite what all happened or in what proportions, but here’s the stuff of the soup:
- Chopped/shredded cooked whole chicken
- 1 zucchini
- 1 can kidney beans, rained
- diced tomatoes, (a can or two?)
- corn, however much we had left
- garlic, bunch of
- onion
- some manner of spices
Let it go for a while, crumbled some tortilla chips in, threw some cheese in my serving, and there we were.
Now, to the topic at hand. This made a ton of soup. We weren’t really feeling soup again for tonight, but, broke as we are, also didn’t want to go out and spend a ton on groceries. So, it was back to La Mexicana Market, where we bought three or four tomatillos and a pack of 12 fresh corn tortillas straight from Chicago’s Taqueria Atotonilco for a grand total of 80¢. You will get sick of hearing on this blog how in love I am with this place. Try the lengua. Seriously.
Once home, Kelly harvested a small bowl’s worth of the solid bits from the soup with a slotted spoon. To this she added some of the leftover Salsa Verde Rice from the molcajete night, adding a bit more fresh onion, garlic, jalapeño, and a squeeze of lime to freshen up the flavors. After a good stir, this mixture was spooned into the corn tortillas and arranged in a baking dish. We whipped up some more salsa verde (molcajete still out of commission, so, sadly, in the blender) which was then mixed with a couple good dollops of sour cream to make a sauce, then poured this in a couple strips over the batch. I added some optional cheese to four or five of the enchiladas on the end, then tossed it all in the oven until the cheese was melted and the tortillas had crisped up in a few spots.
After all that, apologies for the shite picture. I mangled my serving a bit while taking it out, tried to make it more photogenic but only mangled it more. Overall, though, a successful use of leftovers. And, now, we have both tortilla soup and enchiladas to chose from for lunch tomorrow, which really can’t be beat.
Ugly picture, tasty dish
great start to a great blog. makes my edamame dinner seem awfully boring.
Hey, thanks! With this post and my last one, can you tell we’re missing Texas food? I’m also big on stir-fry, so there’ll be some edamame in this blog’s future, too.
And, did I know you had a food blog? How did I miss that? Will be good to have another spot to keep up on what’s happening in the Denton culinary scene.
Edamame is tasty, though.