Sopa de lima
The Yucatán lime broth, scented with oregano and sweet pepper, buried under crisp fried tortilla strips, made without chicken.
Photo : Sharon Hahn Darlin · CC BY 2.0
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 30 min
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- Easy
Method
- Cut the tortillas into 5 mm strips and fry them in 1 cm of hot oil until they stop bubbling. Drain and salt them.
- Sweat the onion, pepper and garlic in 2 tbsp oil for 8 minutes without letting them colour.
- Add the tomatoes, the oregano rubbed between your fingers and the cloves. Cook down for 5 minutes.
- Pour in the stock and the chickpeas, then simmer covered for 15 minutes.
- Pare the zest of one lime in wide strips and steep it off the heat for 5 minutes. Fish it out before it turns bitter.
- Squeeze the limes and add the juice at the last moment, off the heat. Adjust the salt.
- Ladle the broth into bowls and crown each one with a handful of fried strips.
Yucatán cooks use lima agria, a citrus whose peel gives a resinous bitterness that limes lack. A short steep of lime zest gets close, but past five minutes the bitterness overtakes the acidity.
