sausage – OneandahalfSlices

White Bean Chorizo Soup

As we enter into the longest winter months with January barely having come to a close, it seems like it will never be warm again. These are the months for soups, stews, and roasts; hearty and cozy. This is one such soup. It is creamy (without any cream) and I hereby dub it my Winter Soup, topped with spicy chorizo, salty pepitas, and a dash of oregano. Thank you Whiffletree Farm for the chorizo in the January CSA. And thank you Edible DC for putting this recipe in my inbox right when I needed it most.

what you need

2 cans canellini or navy beans in their juices

1 yellow onion, diced

2 Russet potatoes; peeled

1 tablespoon fennel seed

2 tablespoons oregano

1 pound spicy chorizo

4 cups chicken stock

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons salted butter

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or cooking sherry

1 tablespoon paprika

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

(optional) For serving: 1/4 cup pepitas tossed in olive oil, sweet paprika, cayenne pepper, salt, and a dash of cinnamon. Toast under broiler for 1 minute until crispy and allow to cool.

how to make it

Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a soup pot and sauté onions until translucent, adding the garlic and cooking slowly over medium heat. Add the fennel and oregano, and cook for another minute.

Add beans with all their juices and chicken broth, and bring the mixture to a slight boil. Season with salt and pepper. Add in the diced, peeled potatoes, cover, and cook on a medium simmer for 30 minutes.

In separate pan, chip up the chorizo and brown like ground beef or, alternatively, roll the chorizo into tiny meatballs. Once cooked completely through, add the cooking sherry, paprika, and oregano, stir, and cook for an additional 1-2 minutes, or until most of the liquid has been absorbed. If using, simultaneously toast the pepitas under the broiler.

Once potatoes are tender in the soup, puree all soup contents in blender and return to soup pot. Ladle about two cups of soup into a bowl and top with about half a cup of chorizo, a dash of cayenne pepper or sweet paprika, and a pinch of toasted pepitas. Serve.

I have also had the thought that crispy, spicy kale chips would be an excellent topping for this in lieu of the toasted pepitas, but the cinnamon on the pepitas really rounds out the warmness of the soup.

Viking Stew

It turns out raiding, forging 8th century alliances, and carving out new territory in the Saxon kingdoms really works up an appetite. It is definitely time to make Viking Stew. If there is crisp in the air, you want this stew. You want two bowls of it. And you want it with parmesan cheese on top. It is the most flavor-rich, complex soup I have ever tasted. It leaves you full, warm, and longing to make another pot. The secret is in the quality of the sausage.

what you need

1/8 cup olive oil

1 pound loose sausage of choice, hand rolled into small meatballs (I prefer Spring House Farm’s loose sage, nutmeg, or spicy sausage, but Whole Foods loose sage sausage will do just fine)

1 sweet onion

4 celery stalks

4 small-medium carrots

2 cloves garlic

1 cup French lentils

1 can crushed tomatoes

6 cups water

1 Bay leaf

2-6 cups (2 bunches) thin-cut chard of choice (swiss, rainbow, green)

Red pepper flakes, black pepper, salt, oregano, thyme, to taste

finely grated parmesan cheese, to top

how to make it

Heat olive oil on stovetop in Dutch oven or large soup pot. Brown meatballs until they begin to cook through. Add onions, carrot, and celery (diced), garlic (minced), salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, oregano, and thyme and cook until onions are translucent.

Once meat and veggies become fragrant, add lentils and stir until well-coated. Add crushed tomatoes, bay leaf, and water, and simmer covered on low heat for about 45 minutes-1 hour, or until lentils are tender.

Add spices to taste and chard (two bunches of chard is going to look like a TON, but it will cook down). Continue to simmer until chard is cooked through, about another 10-15 minutes.

Top with finely grated parmesan cheese (trust me, do not skip the parm; you’ll regret it).

Adjustments: Adjust water volume to make this more or less stew-like. You can also add an extra can of tomatoes if you like your stew extra tomato-y. Sometimes I like to throw in 1/2 cup of barley along with the lentils to stretch this soup a bit further. And, of course, the red pepper is optional (for spiciness) and chard can be substituted for any hearty green, like mustards or kale.

It turns out claiming new territory and building a Viking settlement in the Saxon kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia really works up an appetite. I’ve been hard at work in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, battle axe hardened by great elk antlers and wolf claws, and I decided it was time to make Viking Stew.

Viking Stew is a cold weather tradition in this house – one that gets exercised almost weekly in the Winter months. Frosty videogames also come with the season. When virtual snow falls in Mel’s living room, it’s a sign of the times (see Frostpunk and The Long Dark for other wintertime favorites).

But Vikings. They are fascinating.

Beyond the History channel’s Vikings, which had enough historical accuracy to be credible, Netflix’s The Last Kingdom, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the award-winning Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, we are not lacking for Viking lore in mainstream media. Vikings had a fascinating culture which drew on Norse mythology as strongly as The Lord of the Rings and Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelung. The word “Viking,” itself, is a verb, meaning to adventure, explore, or raid. They were an intense, vivid, unabashed folk whose arrival in Wessex in the 8^th century drove the land in its evolution to becoming the modern-day England. Their reverence for the Gods and intense warfighting strategies (ghosted in 8^th and 9^th century tafl games such as hneftafl) gave them the reputation for being ruthless, heartless conquerors of foreign lands and slaughterers of Christian peoples. But the essence of the Viking culture was to take to the seas, create foreign settlements abroad, and, above all, live and die with honor worthy of the Norse Gods and, ultimately, a seat in Valhalla.

It is a beautiful, unique culture in the history of humankind. And it has absolutely nothing to do with this soup other than this hearty meal is the type of sustenance modern-day pop culture might associate with Vikings. Vikings subsisted primarily on fish, lamb, grains, and ale. Pictured below are two of my Viking alter-egos – extra points for in-game photography skills.

Eivor

Senua