Part 1: The Stock | A basic stock recipe | Part 2: The Soup | Tortilla soup recipe

Part 1: The stock

Was a time, when the kids were littler, or maybe only one was around because the other hadn’t arrived yet, and this mama and her boy would hang out a lot together, after school (well, day care) and when the husband was still accustomed to long hours in the lab.

They lived in Houston so the hanging out happened at Target on Main where there were dollar hot chocolates at the in-store Starbucks or at Whole Foods on Holcombe where they’d snack on samples and dream up good things to make for dinner—or, especially on holidays, at Jason’s Deli in Rice Village. Now Jason’s Deli had the feel of an old family establishment even if it was a chain by the time they knew it, and it had a good many things on offering but they had their favorites: the chicken salad sandwich on a croissant (with sprouts, please) and this amazingly flavorful steaming, spicy, crunchy fire-roasted tortilla soup. They’d make a beeline for Jason’s Deli because it wasn’t the husband’s favorite, but the boy and his mama loved it. Together, they’d mop up a big bowl of soup, he and she, because he was little and that was enough, and they’d finish with vanilla ice cream in cones from a machine, which came for free. Sometimes, just sometimes, they’d also pop into Ann Taylor if they were having a sale because the mama sure did love those clothes, and they fit her beautifully and her boy was her best shopping buddy really.

Speed ahead 2 decades and a world away, and the Ann Taylor clothes still fit and remained classic, while the boy now needed his own big bowl of that fire-roasted tortilla soup which the mama, gladly, could make for him because they had masa made from home-grown corn but no Jason’s Deli to visit. She’d figured a recipe that came close, rich with tomatoes and sometimes peppers and even avocado, which Jason’s Deli didn’t add. And together they’d mop up big bowls and miss the free ice cream cones and especially the chicken salad sandwich on a croissant (with sprouts, please), which they’d never managed to re-create quite. But they’d managed many other things, and the boy was now her best camera buddy really, so life was full and they had no complaints except the heat, from time to time.

A basic chicken stock

1/2kg chicken “soup bones” collected from the butcher at the end of the day
3 large Indian shallots or the equivalent in yellow onions
1 smallish bunch of celery
2 carrots
1 whole garlic bulb, peeled to extract the cloves or “teeth” as we say in Tamil
2 potatoes
Water to fill a large stock pot
A small handful of parsley
2-3 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

NOTE: to make this vegan, skip the chicken bones, double the veggies, and follow the same process otherwise.
Assemble all the ingredients except the parsley, salt and pepper in a stock pot.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 2 hours or until you see a lot of fat globules floating on the surface.
Now add the parsley, salt and pepper. Simmer for another 1 hour, adjust salt to taste and switch off the flame.
Bring the stock to room temperature, then strain the liquid into mason jars, pressing the vegetables and meat to release as much of the flavor as possible. Break the potatoes and carrots up a little with a spoon to release their “mush” into the stock.
Refrigerate or freeze for later use.
We pick out the chicken bits at this stage and store them to feed our dogs–yes, our dogs love these treats and thrive on them. But they’re local Indian strays and therefore can eat just about anything. All the other vegetable bits get discarded in compost–the garlic and onion content don’t sit well in our dogs’ tummies.

Part 2: The soup

The tables turned on her then after the pandemic, as they must for everyone in this mortal life, and though this story is not new, everyone must live it for themselves in forever new ways. It starts from the time the boy was little and needed reassurances each time he was separated from his mother, and she had to learn how to deliver them. Each time, patiently, persistently: “I will go, but I will come back.”

“Oh,” the boy soon learned to say, and then to pre-empt the inevitable he saw coming: “Now you must go to work?” (Yes, I must). “But you’ll finish and then you’ll come back?” (Yes, always).

And so it went for many, many years until the tables turned and she saw it coming and yet it caught her by surprise. For here they were again, the boy now grown and speaking the same lines she’d once practiced: I will go, but I will come back. And her: Now you must go to work? (Yes, I must). But you’ll finish and then you’ll come back? (Yes, I will).

There they all stood, not quite knowing how to put 22 years into a single hug, not knowing what to feel, or how, or how much.

The day before, they’d had this fire roasted chicken tortilla soup which the boy had loved from his visits with his mother to Jason’s Deli in Houston, when he’d been little enough to share her bowl, which they’d since recreated for themselves. Somehow, the avocadoes cooperated and ripened on time. The stock simmered up its fatty layer, the tomatoes turned redder than red, and the home-made corn tortillas crisped obligingly.

They slurped as they watched Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers because the boy was off to France after all, and this is what the French were up to in Algiers while proposing democratic unions in Pondicherry, because this place of all they’d taken allowed them to imagine themselves “better colonizers,” somehow. And the parents wanted the boy to understand that while we seek the humanity in everybody, it must be with a full and replete knowledge of history—not its erasure. So many tables turning as this great world goes on spinning.

All that, they packed into a cloth potli like in the old stories, and tied it to a stick which the boy swung onto his shoulder, and then they watched him walk over the horizon, and turned back to their dusty old home, and continued right on living.