Sunday, January 22, 2006

Black Bean Chorizo Soup

The staff has been flooded by requests for information about the Black Bean Chorizo soup that was referenced in this blog, and in a lesser-known blog (inkyfournier.blogspot.com). Pepino Suave, your servant of dilled information, has been asked to provide some background about the dish.
I read about it in the newspaper. Not often do you see chorizo in the neighborhood newspaper (the Hispanic population in Pepinoville decreases dramatically at nightfall), so the word pretty near launched itself off the page and slapped me in the face. The slap sobered me up a bit, and helped me remember the fresh chorizo I have been saving in our freezer. Alfonsina, my Mexican Fulbright Exchange partner, prepared a big batch of homemade chorizo while she stayed with us last summer, prior to our emmigration to Durango. It was her own secret formula, of which Pepina, Pepinita, and I only remember that it contained three different types of chiles (we traveled far out of the Pepinoville metropolitan area to find them), and that Alfonsina set the concoction out on the counter for three days, covered with a dish towel as if it were a mass of bread dough.
Anyway, I already had the main ingredient, so I gathered the rest at the local grocers (after phoning lovely Pepina several times from the market to confirm what ingredients were already in our pickled pantry; never predicting her hostile reaction), and returned home with the hope of putting some food on the table, after a long day at the salt mines. The rest of the story is well documented, if not sufficiently appreciated, in "that other blog".

Si, Machos Andan En La Cocina,

Pepino Cocinero

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