Making this corn and chile soup out of season with not even remotely local sweet corn and a cup of Hatch green chiles (medium) from a jar, my expectations were low, but I adore green chiles in any form.
While the recipe could be a project, the stock cooks up in only 30 minutes, and using the jar of chiles allowed me to skip two steps.
The soup was too sweet when tasted after the goat cheese/cream mixture was added, but a generous squeeze of lime fixed that. The green chiles added a nice heat in the back of my throat without being too spicy on the tongue, which is useful when making this for a mixed heat-tolerant crowd. The level of cumin was just right, but the bacon left only a slightly smokey backdrop, so after the first round of tastings, I fried up the rest of the package and crumbled a bit on top of each bowl with more crumbled goat cheese, plenty of lime, cilantro, and chives.
Since I cannot wait for the five minutes of Hatch green chile season when they are shipped to northern Illinois, making this soup with a jar of them is a very good second best.