Second Shot at Soup

True story: I was all geared up to write a post about Bill's favorite chicken tortilla soup (which I made last week) and then I realized I'd written that post before. A year ago. No wonder Bill had been begging me to make a batch!

Good thing I have a backlog of dishes I haven't written about yet. And the next one on my list wasn't a far cry from what I'd originally planned to write about. This sopa seca (or dry soup) jumped out at me from my Food Network Favorites cookbook. I loved that it's a cross between a soup and a casserole and sort of blurs the line between Italian and Mexican. I was also intrigued because it sounded like a version of spaghetti pie, which Tiff just recently introduced me to when she brought it to our Super Bowl party a couple weeks ago. And Tiff, your spaghetti pie was very good, but you have GOT to try this recipe!

I made some modifications from the original, most notably in substituting regular vermicelli for the fideos (or vermicelli bundles). You try finding fideos in a Midwestern grocery store. It's impossible. And don't even think about asking one of the high school boys in the aisle. I'm quite sure he'd have no idea. My substitution was just fine (at least as far as I can tell, but I've never had another sopa seca to make a fair comparison). If you have, please weigh in!

Sopa Seca (Dry Soup)
Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

12 oz. vermicelli, broken

1 medium onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 bay leaf

1 1/2 cups canned whole tomatoes, crushed

1 to 2 chipotle chilis in adobo, minced

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

Salt and pepper

2 cups shredded cooked chicken

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-heat heat. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic, oregano, chili powder, and bay leaf, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes along with their juices. Add chipotles, increase heat to high, and cook until thickened, about 2 minutes. Stir in broth, vermicelli, salt, and pepper. Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer gently, uncovered, about 5 minutes. Stir in chicken.

Remove bay leaf. Transfer mixture to baking dish, sprinkle with cheese, and cover loosely with foil. Bake until cheese melts, about 20 minutes. Let stand several minutes before serving.

Tagine Machine: Part II

With just a few days until I head to San Francisco for Thanksgiving (the most wonderful day of the year!), I should be posting about a Turkey Day treat. But I've been meaning to write about the recipe that inspired my tagine tangent, the Moroccan meatball kefta tagine that I saw on Rachael's show a few weeks ago.

I'm always skeptical of Rachael's recipes, but I occasionally stumble upon one that becomes a favorite (like this awesome steakhouse chili). And I'm on a major poached egg kick right now, so anything with yummy, runny egg yolks sounds delicious to me. So with some minor trepidation, I moved forward with this Moroccan marvel.

And I'm glad I did! I wouldn't rank it right up there with the chili, but this was super delicious. I, of course, made a number of substitutions, including replacing Rachael's beef with turkey, omiting chickpeas at Bill's request, and shaking up my own spice blend. I especially liked the little bit smokey, little bit spicey kick from the blend I concocted (note that I didn't provide actual measurements because I truly did just dump enough for a single serving into a bowl and shake to combine ... you can find the recipe for Rachael's original large batch here). The eggs really did add a richness that would have been otherwise absent from the sauce, and I could have gobbled up all of those turkey meatballs straight from the oven. (Consider that my tribute to Thanksgiving this week!)

Moroccan Meatballs with Eggs
Ingredients:
For Spice Blend
Pinch cumin
Pinch paprika
Pinch nutmegPinch cinnamon

Pinch cardamom

Pinch allspice

Pinch cayenne pepper

Pinch ground cloves

For the Kefta

3/4 lb. ground turkey

1/3 cup plain bread crumbs

3 eggs (1 for meatballs, 2 for poaching)

1 onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

Pinch cinnamon

Pinch nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

2 small zucchini, chopped

2 (14 oz.) cans diced tomatoes

1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon spice blend

Directions:
To make the spice blend, combine spices in a small bowl. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange a wire rack over a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, combine turkey, bread crumbs, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons onion, 2 cloves minced garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Roll turkey mixture into small balls and arrange on wire rack. Bake until cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add remaining onion and garlic, and zucchini. Cook 7 to 8 minutes, then add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, honey, and spice blend. Bring to a simmer. Remove meatballs from oven and place in sauce.

Make 2 wells in the sauce and drop in eggs (I found it helpful to crack each egg into a ramekin, then slide them into the sauce). Cover pot and simmer to poach, about 4 to 5 minutes. Serve over rice.

Dishes: Deconstructed

You know what's a fascinating concept? Deconstructed dishes. It seems to be an outrageously hot food trend right now, though I haven't experienced it personally. I was recently watching an episode of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the Food Network and they featured classic dishes with a new twist. Ted Allen chose a deconstructed eggs benedict as the best "classic" dish he'd ever eaten, and it got me thinking that this is something I should try.

A deconstructed dish is simply a traditional recipe that has been deconstructed into its component parts. So in Ted's eggs benedict example, it was a (very) unique twist on eggs, bacon, an English muffin and hollandaise. They weren't layed as the traditional recipe calls for, but instead were individual elements on the plate. Usually deconstructed dishes get kind of artsy fartsy. In this case, the chef had made the hollandaise into some sort of gelatinous, tofu-looking blocks, dipped them in English muffin crumbs and deep fried them. It was actually genius.

Now I'm not too artsy fartsy, but this kind of sounds like fun. However, I haven't been inspired yet by a dish I'd like to deconstruct. Any ideas for me?