Turkey Soup with Lime and Chile

I made this soup with the turkey stock I made from our leftover turkey.  Before we made stock, we salvaged the meat from the bones to include in the soup and got a surprising amount out of it.  The long and short of it is that this soup was awesome - turkey broth flavored with mirepoix and a bit of chile, used to make a soup with turkey, cilantro, scallions, lime, avocado, and some crispy tortilla strips.  (I made these in the oven instead of frying them on the stove.)  Ken brought some to work for lunch and sent me a text saying how amazing it was that turkey soup could be this good - and it wasn't the first time he was eating it.  We froze some turkey and broth to have this soup again later in the winter.  I can get the toppings anytime.  I'm looking forward to it already.

Avocado Tahini Dip

Today's post is about the Avocado Tahini Dip I made last weekend from Moro East, the January/February featured cookbook on the 101 Cookbooks Library.

This dip is made with avocado, tahini, and lemon juice.  It is essentially a cross between guacamole and hummus.  It was OK, I guess.  I will stick with hummus in the future.  That being said, I am not the biggest avocado devotee (though I do love guac) so if you are, you may be more interested in this recipe/concept.  I tried to use cilantro in place of the mint, which I am sure was one of the shortcomings.

February is almost over and I have made very few recipes from Moro East.  I have a long to-try list that I'll have to go through and see if I can fit in a few more things before the book goes back to the shelf for a while.  I intend to revisit it again in the summer when more of the required produce is in season.

Impromptu Guacamole

While grocery shopping Heather and I decided to make guacamole. We had no recipe or really any idea what we were doing so we decided to just make it up based on our previous experience with guacamole. Lucky for us, it turned out really good! Heather did a great job mashing it up, as you can see in the picture.

Ingredients:
4 Haas avocados
1 large tomato, chopped
1/4 large white onion, chopped
1 small jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
juice of 1 1/2 limes
salt, to taste


Directions:
1. Slice around the avocados longways (to make two halves). Twist the halves apart and stick a knife in the seed. Twist to pull out the seed and discard.
2. Use a spoon to remove the flesh from the avocado halves, reserving the skins.
3. Crush the avocados with a fork, leaving large chunks. Add the lime juice, tomato, onion, and jalapeno and crush some more, leaving small chunks.
4. Add salt to taste.
5. Spoon into reserved avocado shells and serve with tortilla chips.

Since we totally made this up on the fly, as you can see we have no cilantro. Oh well! It was actually really good, although I would like to try it with cilantro one day. Here is a guacamole tip: if you have some left over, put it in a tupperware. Before you put the lid on, cover it with plastic wrap and press it down directly touching the guacamole. This will prevent the top from turning brown. I don't remember where I read/heard this, but it is a great tip.