One thing I love about cooking is reconstituting leftovers into a completely different meal. I often use leftover meat in fried rice, but when we bought a rotisserie roast chicken the other day, the leftover breast meat was a bit dry and I decided to try a new soup instead. My new Mark Bittman cookbook has a recipe for Mexican tortilla soup using fresh chicken, but I made mine with the leftover breast meat, it moistened up the chicken and tasted amazing! Since I didn't make this from scratch, I only used about 1/4 chicken for meat, so my proportions and recipes are different than those in Bittman's Kitchen Matrix. It was just enough to make a chunky, delicious lunch for two!
Handmade flower bowl in porcelain on white EVA plate. Check out these and similar items at my Etsy store! www.etsy.com/shop/MaiaMingDesigns
INGREDIENTS:
1/4 chicken, leftover roast chicken meat, deboned and cut into pieces
1 small onion, peeled and cut into 4 pieces
1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced in half
1 small chipotle chile, broken into pieces
vegetable broth as needed ~ 2 cups
vegetable oil
3 corn tortillas, sliced into thin strips
1/2 avocado, cut into chunks
1/2 cup grated cheese, mozzarella or similar
2 lime wedges
3-4 stalks of cilantro
Put the chicken meat, onion, garlic and chile into a pot and add enough broth to cover them, bring to a low boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for half an hour.
In a frying pan, heat the oil and cook the tortilla strips until crisp, remove from pan and place on a paper towel to absorb extra oil.
Pour the soup into serving bowls, add the tortilla strips, avocado and grated cheese.
Remove the cilantro leaves and garnish on top with some lime juice.
Buen provecho!