Chicken and Tomatillo soup

Once, in the presence of LJ, I said, "On the day I got married I made a big mistake."  Needless to say I needed to clarify my statement pretty quickly, but what I was referring to is the subject of this post.  For some crazy reason I decided, that on one of the most important days of my life, I would make soup as part of the meal for the wedding reception.  I believe the thinking was that since the wedding was in the evening I would have plenty of time and it would be a good way to stay busy.  A few hours in to the soup making process I got in touch with one of my groomsman to see if he could make his way up to my parent's house to help with the shredding of twenty pounds of chicken.  He recently reminded me of this as we were discussing his upcoming nuptials and it was a main reason they decided not to prepare any food themselves.

A little background about our wedding.  I had three requests for the wedding, and besides those requests I was pretty flexible on everything else.

1. I wanted chips and salsa from a local Mexican restaurant to be served.
2. No one would wear a tuxedo.
3. I wanted to dance as little as possible.

Fortunately, LJ was one laid back bride-to-be and thought all of my requests were reasonable.  LJ's mom found a great local restaurant that would cater the event.  However, being someone that enjoys making food, I felt like I still needed to contribute to the event.  I settled on a recipe from one of my favorite soup books (I have since misplaced the book so I used this recipe with some of my own twists based on the original recipe).

If you've never cooked with tomatillos they are a real treat.  They have a sweet and sour balance that makes them wonderful in sauces and salsas.  I roasted the tomatillos in the oven with tequila for added flavor which was based on what I could remember from the original recipe.  I also roasted a poblano pepper under the broiler to blacken the skin, which I then removed, which was also something I remembered from the original recipe. 

I made this version of the soup as a surprise for LJ on Valentine's Day.