My mother learned how to make this dish from Mama Huerta, who lived in a big red brick house in our little town, just down the back alley.

"Sopa" means soup in Spanish. This is a dry soup, made with pasta. Traditionally it's made with those coiled nests of vermicelli, but I use straight vermicelli, breaking it into shorter pieces. My mother made it with catsup, and made sopa when there was about 1/3 left in the bottle.

Sopa

Vermicelli de fideos (coiled nests of vermicelli)
Oil
Chopped onion
Catsup
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a skillet that has a lid. Quickly brown the vermicelli, removing it to paper towels. Watch carefully because it will burn. Cook the onions in the oil until translucent. [It is tempting to brown the onions and pasta at the same time, but they don't cook at the same rate, so you end up with black onions or black pasta.]

When you get that figured out, remove the skillet from the heat to let it cool down a little bit because you're going to add water. Take your almost empty bottle of catsup and put some water in it, cover, and shake it to dilute the contents, and then pour into the skillet. Add more catsup as you see fit, and enough water to make it fairly soupy. Cover and simmer until the pasta is tender.

It's good with hamburger patties or hot dogs. Brown the burgers first in a separate pan, then put them or the hot dogs on top of the pasta for a few minutes to warm through.

You can get fancy and add garlic or garlic powder, canned tomatoes, green chilies, cheese on the top, etc. but I like the simplicity of the catsup and onions. I don't think I have ever mixed loose ground beef into it, and I'm not sure why not, but that would be an option, too. I don't think I would ever use tomato soup or spaghetti sauce, because that just gets away from the spirit of the dish.

Once again, this is one of those recipes that takes longer to describe than to make.