Rich, creamy, comforting, and easy.
, behind a Detroit strip club—it was also the day that I bought myself the Martin mini guitar that has become my constant traveling companion,The latter we bought from Le Dog, a bright red shack in downtown Ann Arbor that serves hot dogs and homemade soups. At the time, the menu changed every day, and the stand served over 400 different soups each year.
I haven't had that soup in three years now, and, in fact, I hadn't really thought about it much until this winter, when the shocking truth of the weather in San Mateo revealed itself: It getshere. I'm out and about in my backyard in a T-shirt and flip-flops while the sun is out, but as soon as it gets dark, the frost starts to form on the grass. That's the kind of temperature swing that demands a warm, rich soup.
If you do a web search for "chicken enchilada soup," the vast majority of the results are of the "open five cans and stir them together" type of recipe. Nothing wrong with that,** but it's just not typically how I cook at home. My goal was to make a chicken enchilada soup with a more complex, developed flavor, and the first step was to use whole dried chilies in lieu of canned enchilada sauce.