Alanna Taylor-Tobin
Lentil Sweet Potato Soup
Lentil Sweet Potato Soup
By Kathleen Furore
Soup might not be the first thing your customers think of when they’re deciding what to order. But it is, in fact, one of the first and most traditional courses in Mexican cuisine.
“Here in Mexico, the practice of eating soup as the first course of the main meal was introduced during the colonial period,” says writer and Mexican food expert Karen Hursh Graber in a story at mexconnect.com. In fact, she adds, it is “a first course that is required on any comida corrida menu…most Mexicans do not consider their main meal complete without a bowl of soup to start it off.”
If you haven’t paid much attention to the soups on your menu, now is a good time to consider the category.
“As we all adjust to our new COVID-19 reality, there’s one thing that will continue to shine through…our need for comfort during such uncertain times,” Chef Steven Winka notes in Culinary Chronicles, an online platform from Symrise Flavor that offers information about food and beverage trends. “There is arguably no more nostalgia-inducing, approachable and downright comforting food than the bowl of soup.”
TORTILLA SOUP
Tortilla soup is an almost ubiquitous offering on Mexican restaurant menus.
The version made with chicken broth, roasted tomatoes, onion, garlic, chiles and tortillas, and garnished with ingredients like avocadoes, crema, queso fresco, cilantro and lime wedges is the classic familiar to most customers. But putting new twists on this traditional dish is one way to boost interest in your soup menu—and in the process, possibly boost soup sales, too.
According to Winka, Masa Ball Soup (a “twist/word play on the classic Ashkenazi Jewish Matzo Ball Soup”) is one example of a recipe that highlights “some new and exciting trends” that Symrise has been tracking inthe world of soup. “[It] simply replaces the matzo meal with masa harina, yielding a wonderfully hearty Mexican dish,” he reports.
Another way to add an interesting yet still-traditional touch is to add chochoyotes— small, corn ball dumplings with a crater in the center—that are typical in the south and middle of Mexico. Marissa Gencarelli, who owns Yoli Tortilleria in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband Mark, says chochoyotes can be cooked in a broth or be pan fried. “You can make several varieties depending on the type of oil you use [and] you can add different herbs and even fill them with cheese!”
Gencaerlli explains on her blog at eatyoli.com. “I like to make them as part of my soup, and I make a nice size of batch so I can have leftovers for work.” Adding a vegan and vegetarian rendition can also enhance your soup menu. One option: Sweet Potato Lentil Tortilla Soup. The dish features smoked paprika and chipotle that the recipe’s creator, cookbook author and former pastry chef Alanna Taylor-Tobin, says “add vibrant flavor to a piquant, brick red broth studded with chunks of creamy sweet potato and tender lentils for an ultra-nourishing vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free sweet potato lentil tortilla soup topped with all the fixings.”
POZOLE
While pozole is included in a list of the Top 7 Most Popular Mexican Stews on TasteAtlas.com, it is sometimes described as a cross between a soup and a stew—and it is typically included on the soup or appetizer section of restaurant menus.
Pozoleria San Juan in Chicago describes it as “a ritually significant, traditional pre-Columbian soup or stew from Mexico… mentioned in Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s General History of the Things of New Spain circa 1500 CE.” The restaurant offers its pozole in all three varieties: green (verde), red (rojo) and white (blanco)—the colors of the Mexican flag.
Green pozole—which can include ingredients like tomatillos, cilantro and jalapeños—is popular in Guerrero, where green tomatoes are sometimes used in the broth. Red pozole, which relies more heavily on chiles such as the guajillo, ancho or piquin, is the characteristic dish in Jalisco. While the dish is traditionally made with pork, chicken is also often used. Avila’s restaurant in Dallas, for example, features chicken and hominy in a cascabel broth, served with garnishes that include chopped onions, radishes, purple cabbage, oregano, fresh jalapenos and lime. And at Los Arroyos in Santa Barbara, California, diners can opt for homemade red pozole with chicken or pork, served with homemade tortillas plus avocado, cilantro, radishes and onions on the side.
MEATY SOUPS AND STEWS
Restaurants that want to include a heartier selection of soups and stews have many options to consider. Among the top contenders:
BIRRIA, the traditional, slowcooked goat stew from Jalisco. Cascabel Mexican Patio in San Antonio offers a homemade version with shredded goat meat cooked in the restaurant’s special cascabel sauce, served with cilantro, onions and limes along with two corn tortillas.
MANCHAMANTELES, which translates to “tablecloth stainer,” includes meat, chiles, vegetables and fruit. Some typical ingredients include turkey, chorizo, pork, pineapple, apples, pears, bananas, chiles, almonds, cinnamon, lard and tomatoes.
MOLE DE OLLA, a traditional Mexican dish made from a base of dried chile sauce, beef, and vegetables such as corn and Mexican squash; it can include potatoes, green beans, and xoconostle. Cascabel Mexican Patio’s version is a bone-in beef soup cooked with cascabel sauce, zucchini and corn (on cob), served with a side of rice and two corn tortillas.
CHURIPO, a spicy combination of beef, vegetables and chiles that hails from Michoacán.
Click here for the recipe for Sweet Potato Lentil Tortilla Soup. To find more recipes for hot and cold soups to add to your menu, click here.
Cold Case: Chilled Soups for Warm Weather Menus
Editor’s Note: While hot soups can be popular on menus yearround, adding cold soups gives customers a light, refreshing option during warm-weather months when a steaming bowl of tortilla soup might not sound that appealing. Here, in this excerpt from a story at mexconnect.com, Mexican food expert and el Restaurante contributing writer Karen Hursh Graber explores the history of cold soups in Mexico.
Here in Central Mexico, where the weather is cool for most of the year, hot soup seems appropriate, but there are warm times, too. That’s when cold soup makes a wonderfully refreshing first course or light supper. There is also something elegant about cold soup, perhaps because one of the first ones that come to mind is vichyssoise, the French favorite brought to Mexico with the ill-fated Maximilian and Carlotta, whose meals at Chapultepec Castle were nothing if not elegant. The Spanish gazpacho was also perfect for Mexican menus and underwent several revisions in its home country thanks to the New World natives, tomatoes.
One wonders how different Mediterranean cooking would be today without the introduction of tomatoes. It was Alice B. Toklas, in discussing the variations on gazpachos, who observed that “recipes, through conquests and occupations, have traveled far.” Certainly, the conquest of Mesoamerica was a perfect example of this, and Mexico has put its own spin on gazpacho with the addition of characteristic ingredients like tomatillo and cilantro.
Another tasty Mexican adaptation of a European dish is a cold goat cheese soup, gaining in popularity as goat cheese has become more common in supermarkets than it has been in local mercados. Using a base of chicken broth, with the surprising addition of a tart green apple, this is a sophisticated soup, put together in short order using that Mexican kitchen stalwart, la licuadora—the blender. An immersion blender is also handy for preparing these soups.
Then there is the walnut cream soup that I first had many years ago at the Hacienda de los Morales in Mexico City, and which has remained on the menu, always available served hot or cold, according to the diner’s preference. I’ve made it both ways, depending upon the mood and season.
There are several variations on cold avocado soup, a Mexican classic open to many interpretations. There is the version from Tabasco, which includes fresh green chiles; Western Mexico’s avocado soup flavored with tequila; and from the Costa Maya, a soup that uses ginger root and cilantro leaves and seeds, giving it a Southeast Asian taste (not surprising, considering that Mexico and Southeast Asia have so many culinary ingredients in common). Another coastal Mexican cold soup is a shrimp soup reminiscent of gazpacho, but with a base of shrimp stock rather than tomatoes. This is a good lunch dish, an appetizer, or a satisfying late supper in hot weather.
Countless Mexican soups, cold as well as hot, call for a base of chicken stock or broth. With cold soups, it is especially important to make the stock ahead of time and chill it to bring all the fat to the top, and thoroughly remove it. Several of these soups get a bright, fresh flavor from a squeeze of lemon or lime. Always use fresh citrus, since the squeeze bottle lemon and lime juices give food an “off” taste. It is also important to serve cold soups just that way—cold—rather than tepid. They should be chilled in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before serving.
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