Aquadito - or Peruvian Chicken Soup - is basically everything everyone loves turned into a soup:  roast chicken, lime, ginger and fresh cilantro. While traditional chicken soups can be wholesomely delicious, nothing about them makes you want to invite people over.  Aquadito has this magical property of tasting like the most nutritious thing you’ve ever had at the same time saying, “Get the chips and salsa!, we’re having a party.” Something about that heavy dose of cilantro and lime make it both healing and happy, soulful and social.  

I’m writing this in a March blizzard on Cape Ann, the end of a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic.  Next stop, Portugal. But I would want this soup in summer, too, served at room - or air - temperature outside, with green lawn under feet and blue skies over head, the Atlantic Ocean a serene, welcoming body, not the churned up, angry force I see today.  

Aquadito, adapted from “Extra Helpings,” by Janet Reich Elsbach

serves 4 - 6

Ingredients

8 cups chicken stock

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, divided

3-5 dried red bird chilies

½ cup mild lager or ale

1” - 2” knob fresh ginger root, grated

1 bunch cilantro

1 ½ pounds bone-in chicken breasts

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of cayenne

Zest of ½ lime, finely grated

Juice of ½ lime (about 1 tablespoon) - or more to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 big handfuls spinach leaves

¼ cup water

¾ cup long grain rice

Salt

Instructions

Heat the stock in a large saucepan with the onion, two cloves of garlic, chilies, beer, and ginger.  Remove the cilantro leaves from the stems. Set the leaves aside, and add the stems to the broth. Bring to a simmer.

To prepare the chicken, preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  (You will be baking the chicken immediately after broiling it until crispy.)  Season the chicken with salt, pepper, cayenne, lime zest, lime juice, and olive oil.  Switch the oven to broil, and broil the meat about 8 minutes, or until golden brown, then bake it at 375 for about 25 minutes, until cooked through.  Let cool until you can handle, and then pull the chicken from the bone, shredding it. Add the bones and skin, as well as any juices that accumulated in the pan when you cooked it, to the broth pot, and leave that to simmer while you continue preparations.  

In a blender, combine the cilantro leaves spinach, the remaining garlic, and the water, and blend until smooth.

Strain the broth.  Add the cilantro “slurry” to the broth, along with the shredded chicken.  Add the rice, and simmer for 20 minutes or until the rice is cooked. Serve with wedges of lime.