No Some soup for you!

I'm freezing my tail off these days, which puts me in the mood for soup. I found a copycat recipe online last year for California Pizza Kitchen's Sedona White Corn Tortilla Soup. I've made a couple minor modifications, and now it is one of my most favorite soups as well as a great excuse for buying an immersion blender. Here's how I make it:

Chop some garlic (I like a lot of garlic), some onion (maybe 1/2 cup?), and a couple slices of jalapeno (some like it hot, but not me!), and fry this up in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Toss in a couple handfuls of Tostitos or other corn chips. Add 1/2 of a package of frozen corn, a couple big cans of tomatoes, 1/3 cup tomato paste, 1 and 1/2 cups water, and a quart of vegetable stock. Add the spices: 2 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin, a half tablespoon or so of salt (the original recipe called for a whole tablespoon, but it also called for frying your own tortillas, and I figure the corn chips bring some salt with them), 1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon chili powder. Bring this to a low boil and allow it to boil for 5 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat for 20 minutes or so to allow it to cool a bit. Use your immersion blender (or do batches in a regular blender, but be careful not to burn yourself!) to smoothe it out some. Add the rest of the frozen corn, and bring the soup back to a boil.

Garnish with shredded cheddar cheese and more crushed up corn chips if you like.

How easy is that?! Serve with some sort of bread--we like biscuits or corn muffins--and salad, and you've got supper. (And yeah, that is the Bayeux Tapestry that I've got my biscuits wrapped in. Please don't tell France.)