Chicken Soup for the Vibe

For @kyosaku_jon: may this deeply satisfying and vibrant soup tickle you behind your left ear

Preamble

I know very little about Mexican food, whether that be the histories, techniques, regional styles and ingredients. What little I do know, is almost entirely from cooking dishes from Margarita Carrillo Arronte's Mexico. One of my favourite dishes I've learned by cooking from Mexico — and subsequently tweaked/bastardised a little — is pollo al limón from CDMX (chicken braised in lemon juice and water, with saffron, cinnamon and coriander, along with some onion and garlic).

Arronte's recipe goes along the lines of: chop some onion and garlic, and put them in a dutch oven along with two cinnamon sticks, four tablespoons of coriander seed, a good pinch of saffron, the zest and juice of two lemons, some preserved lemon and about 500ml of boiling water. Place your skinless chicken pieces — preferably something on the bone like thighs, drums, wings — in the pan, season with some salt and pepper, bring to a simmer, and cook it for 30 minutes or so. It is very simple, and very delicious.

You then finish the braise with some chopped parsley and/or coriander, check for seasoning. Serve with whatever you fancy; I like a rice dish where you fry off some onion with cumin seeds, add your rice and water, cook down and then let it steam with some chopped coriander for ten minutes before serving.

For the 'noodle soup' version of this braise I've made a few tweaks, and use a longer cooking time — to slowly break down the chicken — and then I finish it with some pasta and hot sauce. I would like to try braising the chicken with dried chillies in it, however the only time I've made this soup I've always been serving to children as well, so I kept the spice low.

You can either make Arronte's verison and then convert the leftovers to soup, or pass go and go straight to soup. The recipe below is for going straight to the soup.

Ingredients (and some basic prep instruction):

• A dutch oven or some other oven-proof pot for braising, and probably a skillet or frying pan for browning.
• Some skinless chicken pieces. When I'm doing this I usually buy two chickens, use the legs and wings, and save everything else for other uses.
• A plate of seasoned plain flour. This is just to lightly coat the chicken.
• 2 onions, chopped (doesn't have to be particularly fine, for this I usually do roughly 1cm square bits)
• 4 cloves of garlic (you can go for more if you want), sliced or chopped finely, although it doesn't matter too much.
• 500ml of chicken stock (if you don't have this, water is fine too, maybe just use more chicken bones if thats the case)
• two lemons
• two cinnamon sticks
• 4 tablespoons of coriander seed
• a generous pinch of saffron
• salt & pepper
• parsley and/or coriander
• Pasta. Use some sort of shape you can get on a spoon. I like a miniature shell shape, which lends to a very comforting mouth feel and easy eating.
• Hot sauce (or you could add dried chillies to the braise)

Basic steps:

1. Preheat your oven to somewhere around 140-160 degrees celsius. You could do this on a hob too.
2. Start by browning the chicken pieces: lightly coat the pieces in the flour, knock off the excess, and sear until golden brown. You don't need to take them to a deep golden all over, just enough to seal and give 'some' colour. The flour will help to give the soup some thickness/body. Brown the pieces in batches, adding them to the dutch oven as you go.
3. When all the chicken has browned, add your onion to the pan you were using to brown the chicken, and use it to help lift some of the remaining bits. You can use a little stock or water to degalze the pan, and add all that to the dutch oven/casserole.
4. Add the garlic, spices, lemon zest and juice, and stock/water to the dutch oven. Add a decent pinch more of salt here, as well as some black pepper, and bring the whole lot up to a simmer.
5. Put it in the oven and let it cook slowly for about 90-120 minutes. The timing/temperature isn't massively important, but I find a slightly longer braise works well for a mellow.
6. When your chicken is braised and you're happy with the seasoning, leave it in the oven, turned off, whilst you cook some pasta of your choosing.
7. Finish the soup by adding pasta, freshly cut herbs (finely chopped flat parsley or coriander work well), and add some hot sauce (I've been trying Tapatio recently, which tastes as though it has some annatto seed in there)

PS: I wrote this very quickly and haven't checked it over...hopefully there aren't too many errors in there. Apologies to anyone who might be offended by putting pasta in what could be — for all I know — a Mexican national treasure of a dish.

PPS: I forgot to mention, I usually pull out the bones and break up any bigger chunks of chicken up before serving. This that might be an unnecessary step, make a decision to your own preference.