Chorizo and Chickpea Soup

Today was one of *those* days.  I've had worse.  I'm sure I'll have far worse in the future.  So perhaps disappointing is the best way to describe it.

I had intended to make cauliflower biryani tonight.  Before the cauliflower I bought the other day finally goes off.  But what with the pants day and the cold weather, as I drove home, all I could think about was a lovely warming bowl of something red that would give me the equivalent of a food hug and make the end of my day a little better.

Think dishwater with beans and chorizo in it...

This could have been something like gumbo or jambalaya; cream of tomato soup or chilli con carne; my staple larder vegetable sauce over pasta; Mr Bridestock's Chorizo and Butterbean Stew or even the Mixed Bean Chilli I tried back in November.  But no. I stupidly decided several months ago that it might be fun/interesting/challenging/educational/... to try a new recipe every day so bound by my own stupidity, I gave the Chorizo and Chickpea soup from BBC Good Food a whirl.

Nothing doing.  Despite it having a five-star rating after 60 reviews (my one star couldn't tip the balance), I have to say that this was another disappointing waste of ingredients.  The soup was watery and bland.  I should've figured this when the instructions amounted to 'Boil a tin of tomatoes with a tin of water and a stock cube'   I'm not a food snob, but having spent some time learning from all these recipes how to spice a dish like this, the appeal of tinned tomatoes and Knorr's finest is wearing off.

I even threw in some spices and a little touch of sugar to take away the nasty metallic tang of the tomatoes.  But nothing could save it.  It wasn't helped that I had Tiger Bread to eat it with.  Watery, metallic soup or a big doorstop of bread?  It's no wonder the scales resolutely refused to shift in a downwards direction over the past week, despite lots of running.

So to cheer myself up, I will not be cooking the biryani tomorrow.  Instead, I will be participating in the Weekly Bake Off and making Mary Berry's Farmhouse Victoria Sponge for my esteemed colleagues at my new work location.  Not that I'm trying to score brownie points with them or anything :)

If you want to see if this recipe does it for you, you can find it here.