Tonight’s dinner of repurposed leftovers: “Tortilla Soup” inspired pasta dish

[Dannyalcatraz]

 

 

In the pot…

 

 

Plated

 

Taking stuff out of the freezer to eat to make room…for Thanksgiving leftovers. 😉

 

Had a slab of turkey breast and some homemade turkey stock, but didn’t want to do the usual.  So I adapted a chicken tortilla soup recipe to make a pasta sauce.

 

Ingredients:

 

1) turkey breast (cubed)

2) homemade turkey stock

3) one yellow onion

4) green onion

5) 1 can diced tomatoes 

6) 1 can tomato paste

7) celery 

😎 carrots

9) lemon juice

10) cumin

11) cilantro 

12) salt

13) pepper

14) parsley 

15) chives

16) sliced avocado 

17) shredded parrano cheese

18) egg noodles 

 

After sautéing and seasoning the veggies, I added the chicken, then the tomatoes, lemon juice and stock.  While that was going on, my noodles were cooking and I started a light roux.  

 

After I let the main pot simmer and cook down, I added the roux and folded the noodles in, making sure they were all nicely coated.

 

Plating was a few large spoonfuls, topped with shredded parrano, some more green onion, and half an avocado, sliced.

 

Results: damn good for an experiment.  Reviews were 100% positive, so we’ll do this again.  There’s room for improvement, though:

 

1) I forgot to get Monterrey Jack cheese, which is the classic topping for tortilla soup.  I subbed parrano- which I had on hand- because it melts nice and plays well with tomatoes.  But I believe the classic Jack would have been better.

 

2) you may have noticed there was no bell pepper.  While that’s a classic ingredient in tortilla soup, one member of our household has issues with them.  That said, I MEANT to substitute a different mild pepper- Anaheims, poblanos, anchos or the like.  Just like the Jack, I just forgot to buy them.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any good substitutes on hand.

 

3) sliced avocado is another traditional topping for tortilla soup.  But added ON TOP of this pasta sauce- as opposed to IN the soup- they threw off the flavor balance a little.  The sauce that was nearly perfect from the pan was suddenly under salted when you got a bite of the avocado.