Every so often we roast a chicken or duck. The bones get made into stock, the leftover meat goes in a cassoulet or risotto or jambalaya, stock gets used as and when needed.

One thing we don’t make often is soup–probably because chicken stock lends itself to vichyssoise, which I don’t really like. We never get the consistency right.

But since I failed to remember to portion and freeze the stock so ended up with a lot of stock to use in one go, I decided to try soup again. It’s a twist on the cassoulet recipe, and it worked out well enough that I’m writing it down. Not vegetarian obviously, but it is gluten free.¹

Rough proportions:

2 onions, some shallots and garlic cloves

About 6 potatoes that are sprouty and frightening to behold, but scrub up nicely when peeled

About a litre of chicken stock

A chorizo sausage

2 packets / tins cannellini beans

1 packet / tin chopped tomatoes

Mixed herbs (or whatever needs using up)

Dash of balsamic vinegar if you want

Dash of sherry, ditto

Bit of cream if you have it

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p>I chopped the onions and fried them in the pot (nice big Le Creuset casserole pot), then processed the shallots, garlic and chorizo in a little food processor until it had the consistency of homemade burger meat. I then fried that for a bit, so the paprika in the meat turned the cooking oil orange.

While that was going on I chopped up the potatoes nice and small. Then in went the stock, potatoes, beans (drained), tomato, herbs, vinegar and sherry. Vinegar and sherry probably not needed, but both usually work well with chorizo.

The pot was then simmered until the potatoes were tender (about 1.5 episodes of NCIS). I like soup smooth-ish so it went in the blender.² Most of the soup stayed in the blender, and when done I had about 8 big bowlfuls. Finish with a little swirl of cream but it doesn’t really need it.

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1. Unlike some lentiles vertes I bought recently, which went in a cassoulet and gave me awful heartburn. I guess they use flour to lubricate the flow of the lentils in the factory. Usually pretty good at reading packets for allergy advice, but beans? Come on.

2. If you’re using up fresh woody herbs, take the twigs out first!