{Make this}: Accidental Mexican Soup.

As the name of this blog post implies, this soup was a total accident. A happy one. I had been browsing through Real Simple's recipe page (I love their recipes) and found this one for Chicken with Creamy Spinach and Shallots. The recipe itself looked great (who doesn't love a way to jazz up spinach?) but I was actually eying it as a base recipe by which to try to replicate my favorite Mexican dish from El Mezcal, a chicken and rice concoction with spinach and a sour cream cheese sauce.

So we changed around some ingredients, started cooking, and once we got to the end, realized the cream sauce was entirely too runny so we put it over rice in our bowls and realized we actually had a pretty delicious soup on our hands.

With that in mind, the recipe and instructions below will be for our Accidental Mexican Soup, which has chicken, rice, and spinach. We'll be making it again - this time on purpose.

You'll need:

• Mexican Rice (we bought Knorr but Goya would be great if your store has it)
• chicken, chopped into small pieces (we used boneless skinless tenderloins)
• spinach, torn and destemmed (is that a word?)
• sour cream, about 1/2 cup
• 3 large shallots, thinly sliced
• jalapenos (we used jarred chopped ones)
• chicken broth (ignore the picture of the wine, we decided against it)

What you'll do:
1) Cook your chicken - we cubed the tenderloins, salted and peppered them, and then cooked them in olive oil in a skillet - set the chicken aside but keep the juice in the skilled when done.

2) Cook your rice - this part will probably take as long as the rest of these steps. Follow package directions.

3) Cook your shallots in the olive oil from the chicken, stirring until they soften

4) Add in your sour cream and chicken broth (we used about 1/2 this box of broth), as well as your spinach, some chopped jalapenos, and some salt/pepper.

5) Toss gently until spinach wilts. Let cook for about 5 minutes.

6) Put Mexican Rice in the bottom of your bowls (about 1/3rd full) and spoon chicken/spinach into bowl. Then pour broth/sour cream mixture over that. The spices from the Mexican Rice will mix with your sour cream and chicken broth to create a soup broth that is tasty.

So sometimes messed up dinners end up surprising you. This one was a strange accident but worked out well. Give it a try!

In creative cooking,