Spicy Mexican Corn Soup

This is a good and spicy soup with no actual meat, although I use chicken broth, and you could certainly use vegetable broth instead. Using 2 chipotle peppers will not likely bring smoke billowing from your ears, but if you like more heat, 4 chipotles will likely do the trick. Be sure to include some of the adobo sauce from the chipotle peppers; it will provide great flavor for the soup. Optionally, if you want to thicken the soup, you can add some cornmeal or corn flour. While both are ground corn, corn flour is finely ground. Queso blanco or other white cheese are great with this. I actually used "Chihuahua" cheese, and if you think this it a "dog cheese," you're barking up the wrong tree... It's a white cheese popular in Mexico which originated in the state of Chihuahua. The little dog of that name is simply named after that state. 

Ingredients (about 6 to 8 servings):

3 cups corn (fresh, but frozen corn is fine)
1 tablespoon ancho chili powder
2 to 4 chipotle peppers with adobo sauce
4 1/2 cups chicken broth
3 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano
2/3 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon butter + 2 tablespoons regular olive oil  
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
white cheese in small cubes (queso blanco, Chihuahua cheese, mozzarella or Monterey Jack)
3/4 teaspoon salt (if the broth has a high salt content, you can omit adding salt or just add a pinch)
(Optional) 3 to 4 tablespoons cornmeal or corn flour (or more to your own preference of thickness)

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over low heat, melt the butter and heat the olive oil. Add the chopped onion and saute for 4 to 5 minutes, then add the minced garlic and saute another 1 to 2 minutes. Increase the heat to medium and add the chopped tomatoes, oregano, chili powder, chipotle peppers with adobo sauce; saute further until the tomatoes soften. Empty the cooked ingredients into a blender of food processor and process until smooth. Return the smooth mixture to the sauce pan over medium heat and add the chicken broth, mix well and bring to a simmer. Add the corn, the cilantro and any salt you're using (if using corn flour or cornmeal, mix it with some water or broth and stir well to prevent lumps, then stir it into the soup). Maintain a steady simmer and cook for 6 to 8 minutes more. When serving, add 4 or 5 white cheese cubes to each bowl of soup. You can also add a dollop of sour cream to each serving (reduced fat sour cream is fine). Serve with tortilla chips and/or grilled corn cakes. 
     
With tortilla chips and a grilled corn cake on the side ... 

WORD HISTORY:
Gringo-This word is related to "Greek" (the word for the people of Greece and their language), a word of shaky origin that was passed to English from its parent language, Old Germanic, which had borrowed it from Latin. While there is no firm evidence as to why the "Hellenes," the previous name for the Greeks, began to be called the "Greeks," the Romans used the term "Graeci" as the word in Latin, seemingly as a borrowing from Greek "Grakoi." The Latin form was passed down to Latin-based Spanish as "griego," which spawned the Spanish word "gringo" (also passed on to Portuguese as such) with the meaning, "speaker of unintelligible words, speaker of gibberish, speaker of such poor Spanish, so as not to be understood;" thus also, "speaker of a foreign tongue." ^ Later in Spanish speaking Mexico, which had lots of contact with Americans, much of the contact being contentious, the word took on the meaning there of "foreigner, an Anglo-American," but often implying that in a less than flattering way. The word seemingly came into more English use during the "U.S.-Mexican War," in 1846-48.    

^ In English we say, "it's all Greek to me" to convey that we don't understand something written or said. This was either developed by Shakespeare for use in the play "Julius Caesar," or it was taken by him from some unknown source, but the saying remains with us to this day. Further, what is now the name for the country of "Wales," and for the people of Wales, the "Welsh," came from the Germanic words for "foreigners, (usually) Celts," and for, "gibberish, foreign (usually Celtic) speech." The Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain used their forms of the words (dialects in those times) for the Celtic speaking people of Britain, especially for those who survived the Germanic invasions in Cornwall and Wales.