Halloween warmer – chorizo, sweet potato & cod broth

This is a good mid-week recipe and one that started with a trip to Borough Market, where I bought some uncooked chorizo at Brindisa, then built a dish around it. I was with my friend Jo and had just come from the Chocolate Unwrapped show at Vinopolis. Unsurprisingly, we were feeling a tad sick and in the mood for some savoury food.

At that time of year when the weather shifts and everyone gets coughs and colds, I think it’s nice to cook something warming, spicy, healthy, but not heavy. The resulting dish – chorizo and cod broth – is Spanish-inspired; maybe like a paella without all the rice and saffron. It is full of healthy elements in the form of spinach, sweet potato, tomatoes, chilli and fish, and takes around half an hour or so (including all prep, as you can see in the video) to make. The tomato, chorizo juices and sweet potato also ended up making it orangey-red in colour, so I thought I might as well title my first video post a Halloween warmer. I am already working on a recipe for the next video – something baked with chocolate. Any ideas or requests let me know.

Ingredients (makes 2 portions):

• olive oil
• 1 red onion
• two uncooked chorizo sausages (or you could use the same amount of cooked chorizo)
• 1 leek
• 2 cloves garlic
• free range chicken stock cube (enough to make one pint)
• 1 sweet potato
• 3 big plum tomatoes
• 1/2 tablespoon of tomato puree
• dried thyme
• sprinkling of chilli flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• half fillet of cod, de-skinned
• spinach

(NB I managed to find organic Chorizo, which was a bonus. When sourcing pork from countries other than the UK I’m always keen to know it was reared humanely. The ingredients in the Chorizo were also limited to garlic, sea salt, pimenton and pork – much shorter than the usual list of weird and wonderful preservatives it can contain – and the flavour was very good.)

Method:

Heat a good glug of olive oil in a wide-based pan. Slice a red onion and add to the hot oil. Allow to soften then add two whole uncooked chorizo sausages to the pan and leave to brown while cleaning and chopping the leek into rings. Take the chorizo out of the pan and add the leeks. Chop up the garlic and add.

Cover the tomatoes in boiling water and leave to stand for one minute while chopping the chorizo into slices, then add to the pan, stirring occasionally. Next, peel the sweet potato and chop into chunks. De-skin the tomatoes and chop. Now, add a sprinkling of thyme, chilli flakes – be careful as these are very hot – and prepared tomato into the pan. Make a pint of chicken stock. Add roughly half a tablespoon of tomato puree, some pepper, the sweet potato and a dash of sugar (maybe a quarter teaspoon). Add the stock. Taste and season. Let it come to the boil and simmer for the sweet potato to cook – about five minutes. Cut the cod into chunks. Lay them over the top of the broth and put the spinach on top. Put a lid on it and leave for about another five minutes, or until the fish flakes easily.

28 Oct This entry was published on October 28, 2010 at 5:58 pm. It’s filed under Recipes, Spanish food and tagged Borough Market, Brindiza, broth, chorizo, cod, Halloween, mid-week meal, organic, spinach, sweet potato, video. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.