South by Southwest Chicken Soup

I love soup so much that I could eat it year round. I mean I do eat it year round, but I would eat even more of it even in the dead of summer if I didn’t know it would make J. and the boys unhappy. It must be a girl thing.

This spicy, hearty soup certainly didn’t create any complaints when I served it on blustery Sunday night. Full of grilled chicken, poblano peppers, tomatoes and southwest-inspired spices, this is a healthy, high-protein meal with big flavor.  Fresh lime juice gives the soup a distinctive flavor.

I named it South by Southwest Soup because I made something similar about a million years ago when some friends and I were visiting Austin, Texas. We stayed at a hostel in Austin – spending money that might have been budgeted for a hotel on tickets to Austin’s various music venues. Central Austin boasts more small music clubs in a concentrated area than any other city in the world. Austin also hosts the legendary South by Southwest festival, a music festival that grown into a sprawling music and film industry showcase.

The hostel itself was a fun choice. I cooked huge dinners in the evenings, and we managed to get our clocks cleaned at Trivial Pursuit by some Norwegian tourists.

Try South by Southwest Soup serving with lots of toppings  – chopped cilantro, tomatoes, sliced avocado or even guacamole are great choices. I like a little extra lime squeezed on top of mine.

South by Southwest Chicken Soup

5.0 from 1 reviews

South by Southwest Chicken Soup

 

Print

Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

40 mins

Total time

45 mins

 

South by Southwest Chicken Soup

Author: three beans on a string

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 4 poblano chiles, seeded and diced
• 3 cloves garlic
• 8 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups diced tomatoes with their juices (if canned, use no-salt added kind)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon honey
• ½ teaspoon chili powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• Juice of 1 lime
• 3 whole chicken breasts, grilled and sliced thin in the opposite direction of the grill marks
• ¼ cup cilantro, chopped
• 2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half, for garnish

Instructions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large stock pot over medium high heat. Add the onion and the poblano peppers and cook until soft, 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, an additional minute.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients through the lime and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
3. Add the chicken and cook until the flavors are blended about 10 minutes.
4. Serve garnished with the cilantro and sliced cherry tomatoes.

Nutrition Information

Serving size: ⅛ of recipe Calories: 269 Fat: 12.6g Saturated fat: 3g Carbohydrates: 18.2g Sugar: 8.9mg Sodium: 623mg Fiber: 2g Protein: 21.3g Cholesterol: 49mg

3.2.2708

 About the Photographs

I relied more heavily on the presentation of the food than on props in this shot, though I love the pretty red and yellow patterned raw cotton napkin, something I picked up at Nest Natural Home in Clarksville, MD (bonus: Nest is next door to my favorite vegan restaurant, Great Sage).

The soup is presented in a simple black bowl, with sliced chicken breast, several cherry tomato halves and fresh cilantro leaves appearing to float on top. I created the floating effect by making a little shelf inside my bowl with a plastic tupperware lid and then covering the shelf with soup before adding my garnishes. This technique also works for creating height in other dishes – piling up a salad, for example. Instead of the plastic lid, I’ve also used an upside down orange,  grapefruit or potato.

I took these photos with my  Nikon D80, using a 28mm f2.8 NIKKOR wide angle lens.  I used a Lowell Ego tabletop light like this one, in complete darkness (at about 8 p.m., with all lights in the room turned off). The light was positioned  to the front and right of the food. I did not use a reflector. The background is an antique ceiling tile with peeling off-white paint, and the soup is resting on some old barn wood boards. My ISO was set at 640 and the shutter speed was 200. In both shots, the aperture was set at 2.8.

The post South by Southwest Chicken Soup appeared first on three beans on a string.