I woke up this morning thinking about chorizo and chickpea soup. It was a cold morning, so it wasn’t unusual for me to crave soup and I thought that the smokiness of the chorizo and the heartiness of the chickpeas would be the perfect combination. I knew I’d seen a recipe for this in one of my cookbooks, so I started the hunt. I narrowed it down to Jamie Oliver, but couldn’t remember which one. I spent the morning drinking coffee looking through every single JO cookbook until I finally found the recipe.
In January, my Monday routine has to change as Granville Island Public Market is closed on Mondays in January. I decided that Whole Foods would have everything I needed, but soon discovered that they don’t sell chorizo there. I panicked a bit because I didn’t think that a regular supermarket was going to have a chorizo good enough to be the star of my soup. I thought of holding off until tomorrow when I could go down to Oyama in the market to pick up a beautiful piece of chorizo. But there’s something about cravings, they can’t be put off until tomorrow. So I went to another supermarket and picked up 2 kinds of chorizo, thinking that what I may have lacked in quality, I was going to make up for in abundance.
The funny thing is, I thought I’ve made this soup once before. What I’ve come to realize is that I haven’t, nor have I ever eaten a chorizo and chickpea soup before. I have looked at the photo in the cook book enough times that its perceived deliciousness has been ingrained into my memory. I guess that’s the power of good photography.
I modified the recipe a bit, using canned diced tomatoes and putting half a carrot in with the celery and onions because I think every soup should have a bit of carrot in it. After blending half of it and letting it sit a while, it felt like it needed “something”. I had Ben try it, and he his opinion was that it was “good, not great”. Well, good is not good enough for me, so I fried up the one last chorizo I had on-hand and added a tablespoon of sweet paprika to the pan. I added some of the liquid from the soup and let it all cook down for a bit. I added all of this to the soup and let it simmer for a bit longer. The result? Great.
