a day for soup

Today was humid, gloomy and humid. And then it began to rain. There was even a flash of lightning and a "boom" of thunder. And then the air began to chill.

Dinner would be soup.

There was a recipe that had caught my eye and I had slowly been gathering the ingredients to try it and today would be the perfect day to.

I had first heard about Moro from Michele's blog, Oswego Tea. She has gone several times and highly recommends this restaurant. I have this on my list of places to try when I visit London (some day), so I was thrilled to find the recipe for this soup from the Moro cookbook in my "Little Book of Soup".

The book says, "Forests of sweet chestnuts thrive in the mountainous regions of Spain. This recipe combines some of the classic flavours of Spanish cooking to produce a warm, comforting and mildly spicy soup that is synonymous with the onset of autumn."

I love chestnuts, more so now that I live in Japan and they are easy to buy, especially when they are in season. In Hawaii, the chestnuts that we ate were usually dried, reconstituted and used in kuromame at New Years or sometimes my mom would buy them from the market, they usually came from the mainland and she steamed them.

The hardest part of this recipe was finding chorizo. For one thing, in Japanese they call it choriso. Is it pronounced with a "s" in Spanish? Anyway, I was able to find a package of thinly sliced iberico chorizo for a pretty penny (yen) at the gourmet supermarket.

Chestnut and chorizo soup adapted from "Little Book of Soup"

1/2 onion chopped
1/2 carrot chopped
100g thinly sliced chorizo, cut into bite size pieces
1/2 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 pinch dried thyme
1 pinch dried chili
400g (1 can) whole tomatoes
200g cooked peeled chestnuts (vacuum packed)
500cc (about 2.5 cups) water
salt and pepper to taste

Put onion, carrot and chorizo into a pot and heat until everything caramelizes.
Add garlic, cumin, thyme and chili, cook for a minute.
Add tomatoes breaking them up with your spoon and after 2 minutes or so add the chestnuts.
Simmer for 10 minutes.
Mash with a potato masher, leaving a bit of texture.
Adjust flavor with salt and pepper.
Enjoy!

NOTES: This soup was really easy to put together. I loved the flavors from this soup, it kind of reminded me of Portuguese bean soup. It was a little spicy, very fragrant, a little sweet...delicious.

Have a great weekend!