Mat expands his recipe repertoire...

...with a chorizo and chickpea soup. This recipe was taken from Jamie's Dinners, a cook book that is getting a lot of use lately in our house as we try out new (and hopefully quick and easy) dishes.

The boyfriend found it took ages to prepare and spent about two hours all together cooking it though - not really what you want when you have been at work all day. I kept out of the kitchen as I tend to interfere and for some reason stress him out a little so I did not see the process but did taste the results, to check out the process the recipe is below!

It was delicious, really hearty with lots of lovely textures as part was blended and the other left chunky, every time you got a piece of chorizo it just burst with flavour. The soup got better as you got to the end and left you wanting more, a really satisfying soup for dinner.

Mat will definitely be cooking more!

Spanish Chorizo & Chickpea Soup

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• olive oil

• 150g chorizo sausage, finely chopped

• 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

• 1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

• 2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

• 500g fresh spinach, washed and chopped

• 8 fresh tomatoes, deseeded and roughly chopped

• 1 x 410g tin or jar of good-quality cooked chickpeas, drained

• 1.3 litres chicken stock

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 55g pata negra, Spanish ham or prosciutto, finely chopped

• extra virgin olive oil

• 2 hard-boiled eggs

Method:

Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into a large pot and add the chorizo. Allow to heat up and cook for a couple of minutes until the fat comes out of the chorizo, then add your onion, garlic and celery. Turn the heat down and cook slowly for 15 minutes with a lid on and without colouring the onions. Now take the lid off – the smell and colour will be fantastic. Stir it around and get some colour happening now. Add your spinach, tomatoes, chickpeas and chicken stock. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for around 40 minutes.

At this point you can remove about a third of the mixture and purée it in a food processor. Pour it back into the pot, give it a good stir and season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and stir in the pata negra or ham and 2 or 3 tablespoons of good Spanish extra virgin olive oil. Divide into bowls and grate some hard-boiled egg on top. The egg was a bit unexpected when I was given this in Barcelona, but it actually adds a lovely richness to it.