To America, the Land of NY Pizza- lime/cilantro chicken soup recipe

I know, I know... New York is the land of NY pizza. But I liked the sound of this title better than New York is the land of NY Pizza. Duh!

So I am going to America where I plan to eat in lots of restaurants. I want pizza, a ham, egg and cheese bagel sandwich, a nice Italian dinner (though there is a pretty good, decently priced place in Kech), my favorite sandwich (fresh mozz, turkey and lettuce on a roll with balsamic vinaigrette), Chinese takeout, and a Greek diner for a Greek salad and/or a big, greasy American breakfast. Fun stuff.

I won't be posting for about 2 weeks, so I thought I would leave you with a much requested recipe for a lime/cilantro chicken soup. I wrote it up in a letter to my family, so I'm pretty much just going to copy and paste.

The first part is a copy of the recipe on the internet. The second is my modifications and how I did it in Morocco.

Oh and for citations sake, I did mention Epicurious.com, but I did not mention that the chicken broth I made was a modification from the recipe in the PC Morocco Cookbook.


Hello fam! As you know, I've been cooking vast amounts of food, and the other day I made a soup that everyone(at least the Americans) loved. I know you all cook so I thought I'd share. It's called lime/cilantro soup. I found the recipe on Epicurious.com and made some necessary adjustments for Morocco. I'll give you the recipe and then tell you what I did differently just in case you want to make the Moroccan version. :-)

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion chopped (I used a red onion)
2 garlic cloves minced
1 tablespoon chili powder (this gives it a kick which I love though Jenn, you may want to do less- I used Cheyenne Pepper instead)
2 skinless boneless chicken breast halves cut into 3/4 inch pieces
5 cups canned low-salt chicken broth
1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
1 cup chopped seeded tomatoes
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro sprigs, tied together with kitchen string

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
Sour cream (opt)

The Recipe:
Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, saute until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add chili powder, stir 1 minute. Add chicken, stir 2 minutes. Add broth, corn, tomatoes and 1/2 bunch cilantro sprigs to saucepan; bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Discard cilantro sprigs.

Add chopped cilantro and lime juice to soup. Season with salt and pepper. Garnish with sour cream.

What I did:
I have to make my own chicken broth/stock so I took a kilo of chicken (about 2 pounds?) with the bones and everything and roasted it with salt until it was cooked. I then picked all the meat off the bones, put it aside and put the bones, skin and fat (whatever was left over) into the pressure cooker (you can use a pot but this takes several hours then). I added 16 cups of water and started the stove. Heat until it boils and if there is any foam on the top (the dark fat stuff) then skim it off. Add 2 heaping teaspoons salt, 2 large chopped carrots, 1 chopped onion, a small bunch of fresh cilantro, 3 garlic cloves, 1 tsp pepper (fairly heaping) and some rosemary (my recipe says 1 teaspoon, but I probably put 3 in). Close the pressure cooker lid and wait until the pressure raises and then turn down the heat. Leave it going for about 30-40 minutes or so. W/out a pressure cooker, just keep it lightly boiling covered for about 3 hours... taste to see if it's like chicken broth. When it's done, strain it and throw out all the solid stuff. I used about half of it for this soup and froze the other half for another soup sometime.

I started the recipe just like it says, but I used carrots instead of tomatoes and corn (the carrots soak up the lime nicely). I used Cheyenne pepper instead of chili powder and a little less than it says (though not much). I didn't add the 1/2 bunch cilantro because the chicken stock was made with it. I used about 6 1/2 cups chicken stock. I didn't cook it for 10 minutes because the chicken was already cooked well- maybe 5 to make sure the flavors came together and added the cilantro and lime juice towards the end stirred in for about a minute. It was very flavorful and yummy! I didn't use sour cream (we use natural yogurt as a substitute and I didn't know how that would taste) but I'll bet it would be good. :-)

Just wanted to share! I'll definitely make this one again.