Top Secret Corn Tortilla Soup

About 8 or 9 years ago when I was first exploring online recipes, I came across the Top Secret Recipes site. The basic premise is that this guy takes popular restaurant items for which there is no known public recipes and deconstructs them to determine the ingredients and cooking techniques. I remember reading his account of how he did this with a particular Baja Fresh salsa as though I was reading a mystery novel… I swear I think that he camped out near the restaurant to analyze the trash or something crazy like that. In any case, this is a soup, not salsa, blog and one of the recipes that I copied down from the site was California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) Sedona White Corn and Tortilla Soup. Confession: I never had eaten the real deal at the restaurant—but it was vegetarian and sounded promising (with Sedona in the name what wouldn’t be appetizing?). Oops- just saw that you needed to pay $0.79 for this recipe on his site (I think that some of them are still free though??). In any case, this is essentially the same recipe (but I use veg. stock instead of the chicken). That CopyKat site looks like the same thing… and apparently the Top Secret recipes aren’t so top secret after all!

In any case, this recipe continues to be a favorite of mine. I think that the charred corn tortillas that end up soaking in the soup before being pureed into the mix are part of what makes this a unique pot of soup. This is one of those recipes that I definitely will only use the high end frozen corn (or, in the summer fresh corn is delicious!). The corn, cumin, tomato, and slightly spicy kick from the jalapeno are the main flavors, and the consistency is sort of meal-y—but in a good way.

I actually only made a half recipe this afternoon as my week will be a bit off kilter with spring break for our students, so my eating may be off schedule too. In any case, I enjoyed a bowl of this for dinner, along with a really delicious peanut kale salad. Yum!

I may not do yoga, but I eat yoga soup.

This has been a busy week and I’m heading out of town tomorrow for the early part of next week. Although I bought ingredients for a tortilla soup that I love, I didn’t end up having time to make it. Rather than use a ‘bye’ week, I chose to make a standby quick fix: Yoga Soup from VegWeb. I swear there was a  month a few years ago when I had this for dinner every night. I vary the ingredients from time to time, but there is always the standard ginger, edamame, potstickers/dumplings (frozen—after all, this is a lazy soup…), spinach, drip of sesame oil, and Sirracha. This time I added rice noodles (only b/c I had about an ounce of them on hand from a recipe from Mike).

I love this soup. I love that the potstickers (I used Safeway brand veggie potstickers from the frozen case) break apart while they are boiling and add their flavor throughout. I love the ginger. And the edamame. Most of all, I love that this soup is easy, during a week that I’m incredibly thankful for something easy.

I encourage you to try to experiment with this soup if you enjoy Asian flavors and need an easy soup fix!

Soup...Or Sauce?

Last week I turned to a cookbook with beautiful food photography (otherwise known as ‘food porn’… drool…) for a different take on tomato soup. Vegan YumYum’s Spicy Tomato Chickpea Soup. This soup incorporated mustard seeds along with chickpeas, turmeric, and cumin for a interesting blend of spices from different cuisines. The chickpeas added a heartiness that I find is often missing from non-dairy based tomato soups. The photos in this book always inspire me to make gorgeous (and hopefully delicious!) food.

This one was easy to toss together (minimal chopping, all in one pot). I had one serving right after I made it, and it was good (not great, but a solid good). Although I don’t usually mind a bit of chunky or event gritty texture to my soups, for some reason I was hoping that this would be completely smooth- and it was not. I used my immersion blender (same that I always do), but I think that the addition of the chickpeas made it nearly impossible to get a totally smooth blend with this particular soup.

I put the pot in the fridge to chill and the next day Mike asked about the ‘pasta sauce’ in the fridge. It hit me that this could be a good sauce (after all, it was thick and red, with a sauce-like texture). So, the rest of the pot was eaten on noodles or polenta as a sauce. Mike had his with fettuccini and grilled chicken on top and remarked that it was better than ‘regular’ pasta sauce. I too enjoyed this as a sauce.

So, although I doubt I’ll make this one as soup again, as a sauce it was a hit!