Sopa de Pollo con Albondigas

I love that word: Albondigas. It is so fun to say. It means “meatballs”. I love this word as well, but more because I love to eat meatballs. Today at the comedor, we had chicken soup with albondigas. These albondigas were different than ordinary meatballs that I had eaten before. Since my grandmother makes the best meatballs in the world, you have to make a pretty good ball to compete with hers. These were more of a dumpling than a meatball, but they were the consistency and shape of a ball of meat. They are made of maseca (cornmeal), pulled chicken, tomato, peppers and onions, all mixed up and formed into balls, which are then dropped into the soup. They actually taste pretty good. Aesthetics clearly is not an important aspect of the balls. They look like mud balls with bits of stick and bark sticking out everywhere. 

But the taste is what is important here. The soup itself comes with these strange looking but tasty albondigas, yucca, quequisque, carrots, chicken, squash, tomato, peppers, garlic, onion, sour orange juice, mint and cornmeal. It is delicious.