Chicken Tortilla Soup - Oliver Wagner

Chicken tortilla soup was a very prominent dish for the younger portion of my life. My dad would make this whenever we had leftover bones and such to make the chicken stock, rather than buying it premade. Because of this, I would always get excited when we had a dish that left behind chicken bones, as I knew we would use them to make this soup. About a day before making the soup, my dad would make the chicken stock, which would mean that he would take a lot of leftover chicken bones, onions, carrots, and other vegetables and slow cook them for around 8 hours. Once he was ready to make the soup, he would start on the tortilla chips, by taking the tortillas and covering them with the oil, then cutting them into strips and cooking them in the oven. I remember these in particular because me and my sisters always tried to eat them while they were cooling, without being caught by our parents. My dad then cooked the chicken- the way he did this changes a lot- he uses a large variety of different spices, and will either cook the chicken in the oven, on a cast- iron skillet, or on a grill. On its own, these differences make the chicken taste completely different, but in this dish the more refined flavors of the chicken are overpowered by the rest of the dish. Once both the chicken and tortilla chips are done, he cuts up the chicken, adds the chips and chicken stock, and then adds the toppings. These would be cheese, green onions, cilantro (sometimes), lime, and my personal favorite, the avocado. A lot of the time, my sisters would choose to eat the soup without the toppings, but I've always thought that it tasted incomplete without them. In the past few years, my love for this soup has started to fade, as I prefer more diverse dishes over more basic ones such as this. However, I still always feel a nostalgic spark of excitement whenever it is getting prepared.