Why yes little Oliver Twist, you may! Since I've developed a new found love/addiction for Pinterest, I have come across another lovely blog with what seems like endless fantastic recipes.
Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour has led me to great things like an amazing chicken enchilada pasta and a fabulous Italian chicken soup. Tonight's meal of choice was the Italian chicken soup. The fun part of these recipes is that I get to put the "I'm in Peru and I can't find that shit" twist on it. So here goes my version of the Italian chicken soup! Oh and I cut her recipe in half too since there is only two of us versus I believe four on her team. Plus another "oh and" I get to have the joy sometimes of trying to remember how many grams is equal to how many whatevers.
250g or 1/2 box of some cute shaped pasta {I used little baby shells}
olive oil {I don't measure that crap, I eyeball it accordingly}
2 chicken breasts
4 cups chicken broth
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium/large carrots, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
2 fresh jalapenos {in my case I use a random safe looking green chili I've used before} diced
1 can {28. oz} whole tomatoes, diced {don't question this just do it}
1 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp. minced fresh oregano {dried is okay too}
3 cloves crushed garlic
salt & pepper, to taste
Parmesan Cheese shavings or shredded as desired
To get started I gather up all the above shit except I leave the cheese and heavy cream in the fridge. Then I proceeded to cook my pasta according to the time listed on the package, drain it, toss with a smidge of olive oil and set aside {there's going to be a lot that setting aside thing going on for a minute}. Also while I had that going on I boiled up those chicken tits till they were cooked through. Now she does hers in the chicken broth but I didn't and that's okay cause I was making this my own little Peruvian way. Once the those chicken tits are cooled enough to tear apart, I got to shredding. Again set aside the shredded chicken. Since I had pasta cooking and chicken boiling, I started on the dicing up of the various veggies. Once those are all diced, I set those aside too.
I would say this brings us to the question of "Why on Earth would I dice up a can of whole tomatoes when I can just buy a can of already diced?" Well according to our good friend over at Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour - The whole tomatoes have more/better flavor than that of the already diced canned tomatoes. Since this was my first time whipping this up, I decided not to argue and just go along with it. You can use a can of diced if you like. I won't judge. Anyways, if you do it this way just pull out the tomatoes with a spoon and dice those babies up followed by putting them back in the can with their juices.
Now bust out your large pot to fit all this shit into, grab that olive oil and go splishity splashity with some of it {enough to coat the bottom of the pot} and getting heating up. Now toss in your onion, carrots, celery, chili and garlic and stir that around like a Merry-go-Round real quick. It should look a little something like this:
I let that goodness cook up for about 10 minutes while I occasionally stirred and sipped on a diet coke {you may have whatever beverage you like}. At about that 10 minute mark, I tossed in that shredded chicken, poured in the broth and plopped in those tomatoes with their juices. It should look just like this:
If somehow it does not look like this, I don't know where you went wrong and you are probably screwed and should never ever cook again.
Anyways stir that baby up and sprinkle in some pepper and about 2 small dashes of salt. Now just bring that up to a boil, cover and simmer on low for like 30 minutes {I say 30 minutes because it was a little too early to eat dinner and I wanted to wrap some presents, but really just simmer long enough to heat it through and get those flavors mixing}
About that oregano! I did not have fresh {neither did Pearls} So what she did {and me too} was take the dry, add some broth and a splish of olive oil and saute that until it makes your house smell yummy, so just a few minutes. Then I added that to the pot at the above mentioned 30 minute mark and I let it simmer for about another 15 minutes. Just before I dished us up, I poured in the heavy cream plus that precooked pasta and gave it a good stir while I had Scott shredding up that parm. Scooped some up into two bowls sprinkled some parm on top. It looked a little some like this:
Ta-da!!!! I served some ciabatta bread with olive oil and basalmic on the side. It had great flavor and would be good anytime of year. It's filling enough but not so heavy you can't have it on a summer day. I would say this was a win. That's right Charlie Sheen, this soup was "winning".
