Layered Chicken Green Chile and Avocado Soup with Fried Goat Cheese over Mixed Greens
I like chicken soup well enough. But do I LOVE chicken soup? . . . . Meh, can’t say that I do; until now. This soup has redefined chicken soup for me, that is all I’m going to say. It’s simple, it’s soothing, and it will curl your toes at the same time. That’s a big payout coming from a little bowl of soup! And just because I was kinda serving this to people other than just my own greedy self and I was feeling guilty at the simplicity of it all I fancied up a bowl of tossed greens with some slices of goat cheese that I dipped in panko breadcrumbs and fried until golden. Not that this soup needs a sidekick……..
Here is what you need and what I did….
Start with the chicken. For this soup I used one package with two breasts, bone in, skin on, and one package of four thighs bone in, skin on as well. Even if you don’t fancy dark meat as a general rule, any soup really benefits from the dense sort of fattiness thigh meat brings that the very lean breast meat just cannot. Give your chicken a little love with a rub down of olive oil and then liberally season with salt and pepper, both sides. If you have a spice mix that you are partial to, go ahead and use that. Whatever. Just be sure to wash your hands…..raw chicken….you know the drill. You want your chicken in a nice shallow roasting dish which you will pop into a preheated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. And when you take it out it will look like this..
Always let cooked meat rest for at least ten to fifteen minutes. In this case, you will really want this cool so that you don’t burn off your fingerprints attempting to pull this into little pieces. Please discard the skin and bones when you do….or make your dog or cat very happy with the skin that you yourself (if you are anything like me) will be tempted to snarf down. Sigh… at any rate, while your chicken is in the oven take that onion and give it a medium dice.
Get out a nice big soup size dutch oven and plunk that onion into it with a glug or two of olive oil. Let it cook over a medium heat stirring now and again until you get a nice, soft carmelization. This should take about ten minutes.
At this point, add to your onion one large can (48 oz) of chicken broth as well as a 32 oz carton of broth. Yes, this makes a lot of soup. And you will be so happy about it! Now, you are pretty much done with the cooking part. It’s true! Because you will essentially pour this carmelized onion infused broth over other raw (cilantro, green onion, avocado) and cooked (roasted chicken) goodies, and that would be excellent! However, I am going to take the broth one step further by adding some chopped roasted green chile and a chopped fresh tomato (which I forgot when I took the photo of the ingredients…but you won’t forget it, right?). Please feel free to omit if you don’t like chile or you just can’t get your hands on it, but I am a New Mexico girl, and we do love our green chile!!!!
You know who you are.
Here is where the cilantro, green onion and avocado come in. Essentially you layer some of the chicken into a bowl and top with a handful of fresh cilantro, half of an avocado cubed, and some thinly sliced green onion. Ladle over enough of your hot broth to submerge. The heat gently releases the flavors of the cilantro and green onion, and does something magical to the richness of the avocado, and of course the chicken is not boiled to death in hot stock so it remains nice and juicy and if you have the extra kick from the chile, well, it’s chicken soup with a PhD.
Now with this soup the perfect salad has the perfect accoutrement…..a crispy yet oozy round of salty goat cheese over super simple mixed greens.
Here is what you need and what I did:
Any salad mix will do, use whatever you like. The greener the better but it’s up to you. Make a super quick dressing with finely chopped shallot, a dollop of dijon mustard and oil and vinegar (2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar)
Or, just buy something! There are lots of great dressings out there. Put your greens in a nice big bowl and give em a light coating of whatever it is you have decided you are going to use for that purpose. Then slice your tube of goat cheese into 1/2 inch rounds, dip each one into a bowl of beaten egg and then press them liberally into a shallow bowl of panko breadcrumbs making sure to get each side coated….
and place them into some hot oil in a shallow saute pan, and let them get crispy on either side. Be careful! They sort of fall apart but they come back together……
and you end up with a perfect little something extra to place on your simply dressed pile of salad greens.
Beautiful! Even with my scandalously inept cheese frying skills, this looks amazing!
Soup and Salad on Steroids.