Soup-erb Chorizo and Tomato Soup!

Warm up this Winter with this gloriously good chorizo and tomato soup. This rib sticking flavoursome soup has garlicky chorizo for flavour as well as tomatoes, cannellini beans, kidney beans, salsa and coriander. It's easy as pie and makes enough to serve a hungry crowd!

As soon as I saw this recipe for Miss Rabbit's Very Good Chorizo Soup on Beth's blog I knew I had to make it because since when is chorizo anything not brilliant? I added chorizo to the shopping list and while I worked one rainy Sunday afternoon Mr NQN went grocery shopping.

I got all excited to make this on following day. Monday is like my weekend, a day of cooking and quiet. I rarely go out on a Monday and I enjoy making something to eat that will last us a few days, sometimes even a week. A bonus was that it was pouring with rain the entire day so I felt even more compelled to hunker down with my favourite podcasts and cook something delicious.

Once I surveyed all the tins I ended up making half a batch because a whole batch wouldn't have fit into my pot and also there's just the two of us but if you have a large family and have a very large pot by all means double this-even at half a batch it makes loads. It freezes and keeps well as the flavours develop.

I sauteed the onions, garlic and coriander and then opened up the fridge to get the chorizo. I know Beth's recipe has it all prepped beforehand but skinning a chorizo is easy as they're firm sausages so I thought I'd do it on the go. I felt the paper wrapped package. It didn't feel right and then I realised that when I asked Mr NQN for 800 grams of chorizo he took it to mean sliced chorizo whereas I meant whole chorizo!

I had to laugh because I can see why he bought it but also chuckled because he had already spent a bit of time messaging me back and forth about the shopping list and I wondered why he hadn't asked me about this.

So I readjusted. I didn't have time to chop up 400g of chorizo with the pot hissing at me to add something urgently. I added 400g of sliced chorizo and cooked it with the passata and tomatoes and then I went to open up the salsa only to realise that I only had a jar of super hot ghost pepper chilli salsa. So I added a few tablespoons of this as that was about as spicy as I knew Mr NQN could eat.

Once it simmered for half an hour I then pulverised it and added the beans which were already cooked so they didn't need that long anyway. For you Dear Reader, I left the recipe as it is originally because hopefully you'll just get whole chorizos. A lot of people on Instagram told me that they simply don't send their partners to the shops because it ends up with a dozen messages of calls.

That night when I told Mr NQN about the chorizos he said, "The lady at the deli was a little surprised by the amount I purchased. She spent ages slicing up a chorizo, I think she sliced one of those giant ones!" he said. Which I thought was hilarious because if I saw someone slicing up a giant chorizo, I might question things. Which made me think he thinks crazy is normal...

So tell me Dear Reader, who does the grocery shopping in your household? And is crazy normal for you?

Chorizo Tomato Soup

Adapted from Miss Rabbit via Baby Mac

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

• Oil for frying
• 2 onions, peeled and diced
• 3 fat cloves garlic, peeled and diced
• 1 bunch coriander, washed well (make sure to get the dirt out of the stems), chopped
• 400g/14ozs chorizo sausages (about 2), skinned
• 500ml/1pint chicken stock
• 700ml/25flozs. passata
• 400g/14ozs. tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 400g/14ozs. tin kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 100ml/3.5ozs hot salsa
• 4 tablespoons sour cream to serve

Step 1 - Fry the onions for a few minutes until translucent but don't brown them. Add garlic and half of the coriander including most of the stalks and fry for a minute or so.

Step 2 - Add the chorizo and use a potato masher to mash it up (or use your wooden spoon) and then add the chicken stock, passata, cannellini and kidney beans and salsa. Bring to a boil and place the lid on and simmer for 30 minutes stirring a few times. Ladle into bowls-you can add sour cream too which really takes this to another level.