Swede & Carrot Soup with Crispy Chorizo

Having started back at my day job (engineering mostly), I have found my fridge getting more and more barren, as I have failed to do any food shopping! My mind also elsewhere, I hadn't planned food the way I sometimes do - but on Saturday afternoon we always love soup. I looked in the fridge to see what vegetables we had and we literally had 1/2 swede and some tired looking carrots. A further hunt brought me an onion - so this is what we had.

It was a thick, comforting bowl of steaming hot soup with the punchy flavour of chorizo melding perfectly with the mild yet distinct swede. Really, really delicious!

I have deliberately omitted salt along with the white pepper, as the vegetable stock cube I used contains salt and the chorizo I tend to find salty too - you can add some if you wish.

Ingredients:

1 onion, peeled & chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 swede, peeled & chopped
4 carrots, peeled & chopped
(approx.) 400ml vegetable stock (cube is fine)
3 tbsp. sour cream
white pepper

toppings:
40g chorizo
few stems chives
little sour cream

Method:

In a deep pan, fry the onion and garlic gently for 4 minutes, until soft. Add the swede and carrots and continue to cook, stirring, for a further five minutes. Add enough hot stock to just cover the vegetables, season with pepper and cook on a medium/low heat for 30 minutes.

Take the pan off the heat and using a stick blender, blend the soup until smooth. Put back onto the heat and keep on low while you do the toppings.

Crumble the chorizo into a dry frying pan and fry until crisp. Drain on kitchen paper.

Serve the soup in a wide bowl topped with the crispy chorizo, a teaspoon of sour cream and some snipped chives. Enjoy with some fresh bread.