Of Celebrities and Thanksgiving Leftovers
I should start by saying that I’m not one of those people that goes berserk over celebrities. While I can think of a few A-listers that I would be thrilled to have at one of our dinner parties (Ellen, or Tom Hanks, for instance), I feel that way because I think they’d be fun to talk with, not because of their star power. If I ran into them in the grocery store, I wouldn’t ask them for an autograph; that’s just not my thing. Which I find somewhat ironic because, for some reason, I have met, or at least seen, a lot of celebrities in my time. (All of our friends have grown quite weary of our over-told story about how we spent an entire evening drinking margaritas with Kathy Bates. But it’s one of our favorite stories, so maybe we’ll share it on Entertaining Couple sometime.) So, given all of this, it’s a little amusing to me that I sorta kinda have a celebrity crush on Tyler Florence. There’s just something about him that trips my trigger. So, I’ve awarded him the high honor of My Favorite Celebrity Chef. Hands down, if I went into a grocery store and came across Tyler, Rachel Ray, Paula Dean AND Guy Fieri all standing around picking out tomatoes together, Tyler is the one I’d ask to come to my house and cook something for me to eat. And I wouldn’t mind if he brought his super-attractive, cool wife with him.
In my well-tattered copy of his cookbook, Dinners At My Place, he has a recipe for a chicken meatball and tortellini soup. First time I came across this recipe, I wanted to make it in my own soup pot. But of course didn’t have the gumption to actually make the meatballs. Or the homemade broth. So, this recipe is my way of making a good, homemade chicken soup with a little less effort than he puts into it. (Which is probably why he’s a famous chef and restauranteur and I am not.) But I thank him for his inspiration on this one.
We’re posting this recipe now because this soup is equally good if you use turkey, so it’s a great way to use some of your leftovers from Thanksgiving.
