Spanish chickpea, spinach and chorizo soup - first attempt

Chickpean and chorizo soup

Basics

This has got two key, healthy ingredients - spinach and chickpeas - plus very little meat, but enough to add some taste.  In particular the chorizo adds a real spanish flavor.

The recipe is a Jamie Oliver one but this looks like a very traditional soup and well worth trying a few alternatives.

It went down pretty well with the family.  One problem though is the color isn't so great.  The boiled egg should help but difficult to avoid.

Unlike the Saag paneer this looks like it would be best made with fresh spinach rather than frozen spinach and another key point is making sure that a third of it is put through the food processor.

Ingredient list

• olive oil
• 150 g iberico chorizo sausage, finely chopped
• 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 sticks celery, finely chopped
• 500 g fresh spinach, washed and chopped
• 8 fresh tomatoes, deseeded and roughly chopped- I used tinned tomatoes
• 410 g good-quality tinned cooked chickpeas, drained
• 1.3 litres organic chicken stock - used a frozen version
•  salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 55 g quality pata negra, Spanish ham or prosciutto, finely chopped
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2 free-range eggs, hard-boiled

Recipe

The original recipe comes from Jamie Oliver here.  The process is as follows:

• Put the chorizo in the oil first to sweat it a little.
• Add the onion and celery - cook slowly covered to have the chorizo sausage taste develop in the onion.
• Add the wet stuff - spinach, tomatoes, chickpeas and chicken stock; boil and then simmer for 40 minutes.
• When done put a third through the food processor
• Season for salt and pepper
• Stir in the ham and a little more olive oil at the end

Tips for next time

• Need to make sure you have enough chorizo sausage!  Tried to substitute using salami and adding paprika but it didn't really work.
• Taking one third of the mixture and putting through a blender really helped at the end make the soup thick.
• Boiled egg probably helps the color - it is kind of a not so nice color.
• Try using the dried chick peas - but needs six hours soaking. Check whether it would be more cost effective.
• The ham didn't seem to add that much to the flavor.
• Is the celery really necessary?  Expensive in Japan - only used half the amount here.
• Using tinned tomatoes was no problem