Recipe for Chorizo, potato and cabbage soup

Chorizo, potato and cabbage soup was just what was needed for a cold and windy day in June. You can't beat a hearty soup! This is similar to a Portuguese soup although I cooked the cabbage separately and added it to the soup at the end of cooking.
What surprised me was how many calories there is in chorizo. I chose Sarta Iberico, which was a little more expensive than other chorizo sausages. It's good to try something different. I was very surprised to find it was only 278 calories per 100g, compared to other chorizos as high as 450 calories per 100g. That's a BIG difference! Do check before buying as there is quite a wide range of chorizos out there. You may want a fattier sausage depending on what you are cooking.
The Sarta chorizo was obviously lower in fat content, but I was going to use it in a soup. The flavour was delicate and infused the dish with a nice hint of spice. I suspect the leftovers will taste even better tomorrow as the flavours continue to develop.  We might have to fight over who eats the last portion!
All in all for a dish that took around 15 minutes prep and 20 minutes cooking, it was a pretty impressive plateful and very filling. The ingredients I used created three good sized bowls of soup at around 250 calories per portion.
With very few ingredients you'll probably find you have most. Here's how we made ours:

POTATO ROSTI WITH AN UNUSUAL HINT OF SPICE

POTATO & BACON ROSTI with an interesting spicy twist.
While making these potato cakes, we experimented with the flavours and were more than pleasantly surprised with the results.
The combination of ingredients is not something that instantly springs to mind when thinking of savoury dishes using potatoes. However our tastebuds were delighted with the outcome.
You often see cinnamon and bacon paired together in a savoury bread roll, and this was partly our inspiration. You also see similar spices used to flavour ham.
The gentle warmth from the Speculaas Spice mix certainly livened up the whole dish in an unusual and surprising way. The spice mix contains nine different spices including cinnamon, cloves and ginger, all contributing a subtle depth of flavour to the potato.
Our recipe below would make a perfect breakfast or a light supper meal with the addition of eggs.

HOME MADE POTATO GNOCCHI

With fresh tomatoes in season (and cheap too) this POTATO GNOCCHI recipe with fresh tomato and basil was bursting with flavour. Better still, this is a great budget meal - working out at around 50p per portion. The gnocchi is simple to make, and we think the easiest pasta dish we've made. Here's how we make ours:

GNOCCHI (serves 4)

500g floury potatoes

100g fine flour

1 egg yolk

salt/pepper

Peel 500g of floury type potatoes (such as King Edward) and boiled until very soft. Drain and let all the moisture come out of them, as that's an important step. We drained and let them steam in the pan then mashed until very very fine. Leave to cool.

Add the flour and egg yolk to the cooled potatoes and season. Use salt and pepper - and add any of your flavourings at this stage. Form into small squares -we made around 40.

Bring a pan of water to the boil and drop the potato gnocchi into the pan. When they rise to the top, fish them out - this takes around a minute or so.

Serve with your favourite tomato sauce - today we have chopped up a few fresh tomatoes, fried lightly for five minutes in a small amount of oil, added garlic and basil and cooked for a further couple of minutes.

Top with your favourite cheese. Today we used 10g of Parmesan each - bringing our meal to around 350 calories. This gave us plenty of room for the all important chunk of crusty bread to mop up all that wonderful sauce.

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