Southwestern Chicken Soup

A snowy day is the perfect day to make soup. I like to do anything to make soup the easy way, so here is what I made today, and it was really good. And I'd tell you if it wasn't. Of course if it was really gross, I wouldn't put it here at all.

Southwestern Chicken Soup

Once again for vegetarian, leave out the meat and use vegetarian broth. It will still be delicious.


1 cup chopped up frozen chicken breast strips, thawed
small hunk of Kielbasa, chopped,just because I had some
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon garlic

I have to stop here and explain that we call garlic, raglic. It happened a long time ago after a trip to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. The girls and I were playing hangman, where you come up with a word and mark the number of letters and somone guesses letters until they figure out the word or get all their parts "hung" on a scaffolding. Tara had the letters _a_lic. She went through the whole alphabet trying to figure out what was missing and finally guessed raglic. Of course, she will never live this down. She especially loves garlic and wanted to go to the Garlic Festival. When Trista was a student at UCLA, she had taken Tara to the Stinking Rose, one of their favorite restaurants that serves garlic with every dish. And yet, we still call it Raglic. So put in a teaspoon or so of raglic!

EVOO
1/4 cup brown rice
1 Tablespoon wild rice
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
4 cups chicken broth
1 can each Black Beans and Corn, drained and rinsed
1/2 small can tomato paste I put the rest in a ziploc bag and freeze for the next time I make soup.



1/2 can green chilies I used the rest in some corn bread, the recipe is on this blog
1/2 cup shopped fresh tomatoes
2 Tablespoons cilantro
avocado
sour cream


I started with pre-cooked chicken breast strips from the freezer and a small hunk of Kielbasa from another recipe. Chop them up. Chop up the onion. Put the Olive Oil in a Dutch Oven and cook the onions until almost tender. Add the RAGLIC, rices and the spices. Cook until the aromas of the spices make you really hungry.


Add the meat, stir for a few minutes and then add the broth. Bring to a boil.




Next add the beans, the corn, the chilies and the tomato paste. Reduce the temperature to simmer and let cook for about 45 minutes.


Add the fresh tomatoes and the cilantro.




Serve with a dollop of sour cream and slices of avocado.