Recipe: Beef enchilada soup

I have been under the weather for a week now with a terrible cold, and have consequently changed my attitudes:  as I can't taste much, I just eat to take my medication, without paying much attention to my senses... But I still wanted to finish my adventures with the mexican/tex-mex cuisine - what to do?  I can usually muster the "heaviness" of the beautiful dishes, but not right now.  Solution:  try a soup, a staple that has got me through this week, with a twist:  use ingredients that would give me that essential kick, to remind me of how I used to eat...

Beef enchilada soup

adapted from Lidsey's Luscious

For the vegetable stock

3 carrots, peeled 

1 leek

1 bunch celeri

1 medium onion

1 bouquet garni

Cut all vegetables in chunks.  In a large pot, heat 1 tbsp of oil and slightly brown the vegetables (they bring a lot more aroma into the stock that way).  Pour 2.5 l of water and reduce heat to a medium.  Add the bouquet garni and leave to bubble away for about 1 hour.  Take off the heat and leave to cool, with the vegetables in the stock (get all you can!).  This yields about 2l of stock - I then keep the carrot chunks and mash them.

For the soup

500g beef in cubes (eg. for gulash or carbonades)

1 medium onion, finely sliced 

3 cloves of garlic, minced

500ml sauce Arrabbiata (tomato sauce with chillies)

1.5l vegetable stock

250g corn kernels

6 small corn tortillas, shredded

300g pecorino cheese, shredded

(given my illness, I didn't use any more chillies, but feel free to add 1-2 chopped ones in the soup!)

Print recipe

First, brown the meat:  In a large pot, heat 1 tbsp olive oil  and brown the beef cubes from all sides.  Remove from the pot and keep aside (once slightly cooler, I cut up the cubes even finer).  Back in the pot, add 1 more tsp of olive oil and brown the onion and garlic.  Add the tomato sauce, reduce heat to medium.  Add the stock, the corn kernels, the tortillas and the cheese.  In total, cook the soup for about 45 minutes.  Somewhere at midtime, add the meat so that it heats up again.  

You could blitz the soup without the meat and corn, but I really like  the consistency it had as such - the crunchy corn, the tortillas binding the soup, everything had its place in this recipe.  And, a confession:   I was so tired that I could not even chew the tiny bits of meat, so I just had the rest of the soup.  And a revelation:  the soup is SO DELICIOUS, with just enough spice to awake my spirits, that I really did not need the meat and may turn this recipe into a vegetarian one!

This post is my entry into Weekend Cooking, a weekly event hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

This is also my third pin in the Pin it and Do it:  A Pinteresting challenge, hosted by Trish.