Dan the Man bakes bread and desserts for a local brewery. One bar employee, Chris, particularly loves Dan’s desserts, so we spend a lot of time talking about food. As a native Mexican, Chris asked Dan about making her favorite soup from childhood — Sopa de Fideo, or Noodle Soup. Neither Dan nor I had ever heard of it, but I was up for the challenge. I found a recipe to try at https://www.isabeleats.com/sopa-de-fideo/.This turned out to be a delicious and very easy recipe. The specialty ingredient was fideo noodles — short pieces of vermicelli each about one inch long. I found them in the Latin aisle of my local market, but you could easily use vermicelli and break the noodles into small pieces.

Using a blender (yes, that’s an ancient Osterizer), I whizzed until smooth:  2 cans of fire-roasted tomatoes, one roughly chopped onion (yay, no dicing!), one clove of garlic, 1 cup of chicken stock, and 1/2 teaspoon of cumin.

I transferred this goop into a Dutch oven, added one tablespoon of olive oil, and cooked this over medium high heat for about five minutes.

While this was heating up, I added a tablespoon of olive oil into a medium-sized pan over medium high heat and added 8 ounces of the  fideo noodles.  The noodles browned and got a little crispy in about 5 minutes.

Finally, I added the rest of the chicken broth (5 cups), about 2 teaspoons of salt, a little pepper, and the noodles into the tomato mixture. I cooked this for about 15 more minutes, until the noodles were soft. I tasted and seasoned with more salt and pepper. I had some chopped cilantro on the side to add to individual bowls.

That’s all there is to it! It really was delicious, and I think the tomato mixture without the noodles would make a wonderful tomato soup with addition of a little cream. Try it — you’ll love the flavor and be impressed about how easy it is to make. Buen apetito!