Sopa de lima

As tradition built it

Sopa de lima

Serves 6. About 1 hour.

Ingredients

Recado de toda clase

• 2 tbsp black peppercorns
• 60ml Yucatecan oregano, lightly toasted
• 6 cloves
• 8 allspice berries
• 3cm cinnamon stick
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp sour orange juice
• 1 tsp garlic, chopped

The soup

• 1 tsp salt
• 2.5 litres chicken stock, or boiling water
• 1 (about 300g) chicken breast, bone in, skinless
• 3 tbsp corn oil
• 60ml white onion, chopped
• 3 tbsp chile dulce or green pepper, chopped
• 1 large tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped

The tortilla strips

• 6 corn tortillas
• for frying corn oil

In each bowl

• 1 lima, in 6 slices as thin as you can
• 6 tbsp lima juice, squeezed at serving
• 1 tsp lima zest, optional

On the table

• to serve hot salsa, tamulada of habanero or xnipek

Method

The recado

1. Grind the whole spices and the oregano to a powder. Make the paste at the moment you use it: grind 1 teaspoon of the powder with the sour orange juice and the garlic until smooth. The powder makes about a cupful, far more than one soup needs.

The tortilla strips

2. Cut the tortillas into strips about 3cm long and very thin. Spread them on a tray to dry a little, then fry them in hot oil until lightly golden and drain them on paper. They keep 2 days.

The soup

3. Dissolve the recado paste and the salt in the stock. Add the chicken, cover and cook until it is done. Lift it out, discard the bone and shred the meat. Taste the broth for salt. Keep broth and meat apart.
4. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion lightly. Add the chile dulce and the tomato and cook until the tomato's juice has gone. You should have about half a cupful.
5. In each bowl put about 40g of chicken, 3 tablespoons of tortilla strips, a heaped tablespoon of the tomato, a slice of lima, a tablespoon of lima juice and a pinch of zest. Pour the broth over very hot and serve at once, with hot salsa on the table for each person to add.

Notes

The recipe is Ricardo Muñoz Zurita's, from Los clásicos de la cocina mexicana. The lima is Citrus limetta, and the soup is not meant to be sour. Pati Jinich seasons her broth with charred garlic, oregano, thyme, bay and clove instead of a recado, simmers the sofrito in it for 8 to 10 minutes, and gives each guest half a lima to squeeze. Some old recipes add chicken livers and gizzards, which Muñoz Zurita leaves out.

What a modern chef changes

Clarified consommé, dehydrated crouton, sous vide confit

Method

1. Clarify the finished broth through a chinois into something close to a genuine consommé, rather than serving it as the working stock most home versions leave slightly cloudy.
2. Dehydrate a portion of the tortilla strips' corn dough before frying, for a genuinely crisper, longer-holding crouton that survives the hot broth without collapsing.
3. Confit the chicken sous vide separately in a portion of the stock before shredding it back in, holding it properly moist.