Eugene cook brings home taste of Mexico.

Byline: HOME COOKING By Jim Boyd The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 7/28/04): The Home Cooking column featuring Diane Angermayer's Chicken Tortilla Soup in the July 21 Entree section contained a reporter's error in a note about making stock. Angermayer makes rich chicken stock for the soup using one rounded tablespoon of Aromont Classic Chicken Demi-glace added to four cups of water. The amount of water in last week's story was wrong.

Diane Angermayer of Eugene loves to cook so much that she signs up for cooking classes year-round at one of Eugene's cookware stores.

"I have been taking cooking classes at Cook's Pots & Tabletops - actually Cook's Nook before that - for about 20 years," she said. "I have stacks of cooking recipes that I got from there. And I love them. I use them all the time."

Angermayer works full time as a receptionist for Dr. Bob O'Donnell, an endodontist, and then goes home to cook for her husband, Don, and sons Rick and Jeff.

Specialty: `My specialty is probably `doing new things.' In a typical week, I'll make recipes that I've never made before five nights. One night, I might do a meat recipe and a side dish and a salad that all three of the recipes I've never made before.

`Some people will come home after a day's work and feel like, `I don't want to be in the kitchen' and I go into the kitchen to unwind,' Angermayer said.

How she began cooking: "My mother started her marriage not even knowing how to boil water, according to her. So she decided she didn't want that to happen to my sister and I, and she had us in the kitchen early on," Angermayer said.

"As a child, I could do, you know, making a green salad or doing Jell-O or pudding or helping her with stirring things. So by the time I was 13, I was making dinner for the family. I've just always loved it."

Her biggest cooking success: "Two dinners that I did for my brother and his wife (Marty and Maureen Martin)," Angermayer said. "I offered to make them dinner as a gift for a birthday and my sister (Morre Hoffman) came with me and helped.

"We did an Italian dinner for them, starting with appetizers. We made manicotti and we did a nice white chocolate and dark chocolate terrine with a raspberry sauce.

"The guests loved it and my brother and his wife loved it, because we just came in and made this dinner in courses and did all the serving and everything. It was really neat.

"And then we did another one where we did all French for them."

The guests were so appreciative that they actually applauded, she said.

Her biggest cooking failure: When she was first married, Angermayer and her husband would cook together. One night, they baked pork chops in a Pyrex dish and wanted to make gravy from the pan.

`He got the pan out (of the oven) and put it on the stove top, and he said, `Well, is this OK?'

`And I said, `Oh, sure! No problem. It's Pyrex.'

`And so, of course, it's not OK to put Pyrex on top of the stove and try to make gravy in it. So we ended up with broken glass and gravy everywhere, and we spent a long time cleaning up the mess. And then we went out for pizza."

Her favorite cookbooks: `I have a lot of the cookbooks by Maryana Vollstedt, going back to 1976. I bought `Spaghetti Etcetera.' I use that book. And the two by Maryana Vollstedt that I use most often are `Pacific Fresh' and `What's for Dinner?'

"I have, I think, at last count about 140 cookbooks and I use them all, but I use Maryana's - those two - most often. I also use recipes from Bon Appetit and Gourmet and The Register-Guard and all the classes I've taken at Cook's Pots & Tabletops."

Why this recipe was chosen: "The reason I chose this recipe, number one, is because everybody loves it. But, number two, is because I got the recipe when we were in Puerto Vallarta in April last year. There was a group of 11 of us, all family, who spent a week there. Our cook was Carmen, and Carmen made this soup for us. We all loved it and we asked her to make it for us again. So when she made it again, I went into the kitchen and asked her in the worst Spanish possible for the recipe."

Carmen spoke no English so Angermayer had to watch carefully and take notes as Carmen demonstrated how to make the soup. Carmen also wrote out a list of ingredients in Spanish that Angermayer had translated.

Guajillo chilies are the only soup ingredient Angermayer has been unable to locate by that name in Eugene. The dried chilies that Carmen used were probably 4 or 5 inches long, kind of shiny and a dark reddish brown, Angermayer said. A chili that looks similar is available here in hot and mild varieties in bags labeled "New Mexico chili pods" she said. The mild ones are the ones she uses in this recipe.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

1 whole chicken, cut up

4 cups rich chicken stock plus enough water to cover the chicken pieces (Carmen uses only water to cover)

1/4 white onion, chopped

1/2 of a large garlic clove, minced

1 large dried guajillo chili, seeded and chopped (labeled "mild New Mexico chili pod" at WinCo and Fred Meyer)

1/4 teaspoon Mexican oregano 

Handful of fresh mint leaves, chopped (Carmen's secret ingredient, which she calls herbabuena)

1 28-ounce can whole or diced tomatoes with juice

Corn tortillas, 2 per serving

Queso manchego, enough to top each serving (Carmen's amount was enough to cover a dinner plate 1 inch deep)

Put chicken pieces in a large pot with enough water to cover, if you want to try Carmen's original recipe. For Angermayer's kicked-up version, use 4 cups rich chicken stock plus enough water to cover the chicken pieces.

(Angermayer makes her stock from Aromont Classic Chicken Demi-glace, available at Cook's Pots & Tabletops, using about a rounded tablespoon of the demi-glace to make each cup of stock.)

Bring the liquid to a boil, then partially cover the pot and simmer for an hour or so. Remove chicken and strain broth. Cool in refrigerator and spoon off most of the fat. Separate chicken meat from bones and cut/shred into small pieces.

Saute onion, garlic, oregano and chili until onion is translucent.

Then puree this mixture with the canned tomatoes, juice and the chopped mint in a blender or food processor.

Add this tomato puree and the shredded chicken to the chicken broth in the pot and heat through.

Cut tortillas in 1/4-inch strips and fry in oil until crisp. Drain on paper towels. (Can be done in advance - cover airtight.)

Serve soup in shallow bowls topped with tortilla strips and queso manchego.

Makes approximately 3 1/2 quarts.