Viva Las Sopa De Tortilla!

We wanted to embrace the festivities of Cinco de Mayo this week... Unfortunately, we were still recovering from the massive intake of cheesy carby fat from last weekend's arancini to make most mexican dishes so we settled on the "healthier" Sopa De Tortilla of South Beverly Drive's Frida Mexican Restaurant. http://www.fridarestaurant.com/

Searching through numerous recipes led us straight back to Jac's personal favorite - Emeril's Favorite Tortilla Soup. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/emerils-favorite-tortilla-soup-recipe/index.html We often have to use Jac's personal favorite recipe for dishes as she's a little bit bossy. Nonetheless, her taste IS quite impeccable.

Our weekly blog serves another purpose after cooking and eating, it is also to introduce Ryan to all of the toys sold by our favorite kitchen supply stores. In fact, as Jac is an avid collector of such gadgets, her hallway coat closet has been remodeled to include shelves which neatly display the kitchen cabinet spillover. It was from this treasure trove that we retrieved the slow cooker and the chopper. The chopper is our most used kitchen gadget (thanks Auntie Beverly) and made tonight's onion, jalapeno, and green pepper chopping a breeze - it also measures! http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/cw369/index.cfm?pkey=xsrd0m1%7C16%7C%7Cchopper&cm%5Fsrc=SCH. We cheated a bit and used pre-chopped garlic as all the peeling makes our hands stinky.

We followed the recipe for the most part but reduced the cilantro because it is so overpowering and used a slow cooker rather than a stove top dutch oven - slow simmer is almost always better. Rather than using chicken breast cubes we bought one of those pre-made rotisserie chickies from the grocery store and carefully shredded the breast pieces. Although ours was purchased from Ralph's, Jac strongly recommends the Costco version of this rotisserie chicken.

After several hours of simmering the soup, we sliced corn tortilla into small strips, threw them in a ziplock bag and shook them up with some corn oil and Emeril's southwest essence and baked them to a crisp! Yum.

Justin supplied the incredible blended margaritas.

Cost Analysis:
Frida's - $8 per bowl (appx. 1.5 cups)
Sunday Night Bites - $40 per slow cooker batch (appx. 10 cups) - WINNER!!!

Taste Analysis:
Jac - "Frida's should adopt our recipe because it's about 100 times better"
Ryan - "I refrain from eating chicken but it smells great!"
Justin - "I'll eat Ryan's portion"

NEXT WEEK - Mother's Day! Sound's like an appetizer or dessert week to us! We're also dying to do the Potato Crusted Halibut ala Chateau Marmont. Have any ideas for upcoming weeks? Post them in the comments!

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=640&f=27580&q=cuisinart+slow+cooker&fromLocation=Search&DIMID=400001&SearchPage=1