Les Petits Chefs make Earl’s Restaurant Tortilla Soup from The Soup Sisters Family Cookbook

For this week’s edition of Cook the Books, Les Petits Chefs worked from The Soup Sisters Family Cookbook.

Soup Sisters Family CookbookI wrote about The Soup Sisters Family Cookbook late last year:

This is the third cookbook in the bestselling Soup Sisters cookbook series, and contains  over 100 family-friendly recipes to make and share with kids of all ages. Soup Sisters began in 2009, founded by Sharon Hapton, as a means of providing nutritious, delicious and comforting soup to women and children in need. What began as a single chapter in Calgary, Canada, has now spread to over 20 cities across North America. The recently-launched Souper Kids program involves children aged 8 to 17 who are learning how to give back and how to make a real difference in the lives of families who need it the most.

This cookbook (a compilation of recipes from over 100 contributors, including volunteers, home cooks, and chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigella Lawson, Michael Smith, Elizabeth Baird, Anna Olson and Curtis Stone, as well as celebrity “souper” kids Logan Guleff, Abby Major, Zac Kara, and Skylar and Chloe Sinow) has a definite family focus – aiming to bring people together in the kitchen to cook and eat together. The recipes  are a collection of classics mixed with more imaginative kid-inspired recipes and are divided into Garden Grown (vegetarian), Magic Beans (beans and legumes), Noodling Around (yup, noodle soups), The Main Event (more hearty offerings) and Chill Out (chilled soups – I have a recipe in this chapter!). There’s a great section in the front of the book with tips for cooking with kids and setting up your pantry and kitchen equipment and recipes for basic stocks (the base of all great soups!).

The book is really well laid-out – lots of clean, white space with bright images and even some shots of the “souper chefs” themselves (there’s a fun section at the back too with bios of the kids who contributed recipes, such a fun read). The book does not contain photos of every finished dish, though, which I feel kids do really appreciate (this big kid does, too!), that would be my only “con”. In any case, soup is a great place to start kids cooking and I have found over the past 8+ years teaching kids to cook that they will most definitely be more likely to try vegetables in soup form.  A wonderful addition to any budding cook’s library!

Soup is one of the things I like to cook with the boys because it’s a great way to get them working with vegetables. I chose the Tortilla Soup from Earls Restaurant mostly because it was able to be prepared in under an hour (plus, I knew the soup toppings – tortilla chips! shredded cheese! – would be appealing to the boys). There are a lot of good basic knife skills to be learned here too – mincing garlic…

Kids mincing garlic for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comSlicing onions:

Kids chopping onions for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.com Kids slicing onions for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comSlicing tomatoes:

Kids slicing tomatoes for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comChopping cilantro:

Kids chopping cilantro for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comThe soup is very simple – onions, garlic, tomatoes (fresh and canned crushed tomatoes) and broth. Cooked down a little and blitzed using an immersion blender.

Adding crushed tomatoes for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comThe challenge with soup in an hour is that it’s always so hot to send home with the boys… We had someone on soup-cooling duty…

Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comThe recipe gives directions for making your own tortilla chips but in an hour, we barely had time for the soup so I bought chips for the boys to garnish their soup with. We had cilantro and shredded cheese too.

Garnishes for Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.com

The finished product looked something like this:

The finished dish Earls Restaurant tortilla soup on eatlivetravelwrite.comAnd hey, did you know –

March 3rd 2018 is #SoupitForwardDay!

Soup Sisters Soup it Forward Day March 3 2018

For the past nine years Soup Sisters has been sharing the healing power of soup by delivering nourishing “Hugs in a Bowl” to women, children, and youth in crisis. To spread the social impact of Soup Sisters even wider, they have officially founded National Soup It Forward Day! From 2018 on, every year on March 3, National Soup It Forward Day will encourage people across Canada and the US to make and deliver love and kindness by the bowlful! Perhaps you know someone who has been ill or down on their luck, or someone who could just use a little warmth and kindness in their lives? Whatever the situation, we know homemade soup can go a long way.

How can you take part in #SoupitForwardDay ?

Make your favourite soup and deliver it to someone you know who could use some extra warmth and kindness in their life. Use #SoupItForwardDay to share on social media and don’t forget to tag Soup Sisters:

Facebook: SoupSisters
Instagram: @soup_sisters
Twitter: @soup_sisters

What soup will you make to share?

Soup Sisters Family Cookbook

 

 

 

Buy The Soup Sisters Family Cookbook on Amazon (this link should bring you to the Amazon store closest to you) Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository

 

Please note: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post also contains affiliate links from The Book Depository. This means that if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you) which goes towards maintaining eat. live. travel. write. Thank you in advance!

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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book firstly because I contributed a recipe and secondly  for review purposes from the publishers. I was not asked to write about this book and am not being compensated for writing this post. All opinions are my own.

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