Leek and potato soup with green chorizo

The chorizo isn't green. It's homemade sausage with a lot of cilantro in it.

Leek and potato, carrots and such, form the base of the soup along with chicken stock processed to puree.

The trick of this soup is summer-ripe heirloom tomato and avocado slices placed in the bowl before the soup is added and shredded lettuce and shredded cheese on top of the soup, for crunch and for additional depth. With generous cilantro to catch your breath.

It is a salad inside a soup.

It is incredible. Nobody expects that. Nobody knows how fantastic that is.

One time years ago ...

Fine.

Decades ago.

A friend and I dropped into a small place on Colfax. I think it was named "Maria's."

It was a strange place. Something like a gas station converted to a tiny clean restaurant. Possibly a 7-11, but definitely started out something other than a restaurant. They were not prepared for the crowd they would attract. Their meals were traditional home-Mexican. A bit different than everything else that you see. And that's what attracted so many customers.

Before your actual meal each person was served a simple bowl of clear chicken broth. Very flavorful. This must have been made on site, not a commercial chicken broth.

At the bottom of each bowl was one segment of fresh tomato and one slice of avocado. Just sitting there at the bottom of the bowl. You could see them at the bottom just waiting for you.

I went back to that restaurant a couple of times just to enjoy that introductory soup. A very long wait, only a few tables and a whole lot of customers, then poof, the place was gone.

So sad. A place outstanding as that. I have no idea what went wrong.

It was like Maria had died. Something great, something truly unique died.

I think about that first-course soup all the time. It was so clean and simple. Anyone could make that but so far as I knew only Maria did.

My version is a meal in a bowl.

My soup is thick, made from pureeing vegetables with stock. I use an entire high summer heirloom tomato and half an entire avocado. I float shredded iceberg lettuce on top for its crunch instead of croutons and shredded cheese for additional depth and dimension that melts when it's mixed into the hot soup.

I go crazy where Maria kept sane.

Mine is a meal where Maria's was introduction to a meal.

Thank you, Maria. Whoever you are. You are splendid.

I bet you ten dollars she died and that's why they couldn't go on without her.

They were bereft.

She had a great thing going on.

This stuff blended with chicken stock to form a thick soup. Maria's was clear broth so you could see the tomato chunk and the avocado slice on the bottom.

Maria's version did not have chorizo or any other meat besides the clear chicken broth

Best when the tomatoes are best. If tomatoes are not in season then just forget the whole thing!

Half an avocado. Or, what the heck, maybe the whole thing. Usually I'll squeeze lime all over the avocado and season the pieces heavily and separately from the rest of the salad, but in this case the soup does that. 

Now, that treasure is buried under the soup. It's like pirate-soup; hidden treasure.

One expects croutons on top. And that would be fine. Especially if the croutons were seasoned or if they were sourdough. 

But this time we're using lettuce for a similar crunch. Your guests will be all, "What?" Nobody sensible puts lettuce on top of thick soup. It just isn't done. But nobody appreciates yet that there is a raw vegetable salad underneath that is greater than the soup that is hiding it. 

Asiago cheese and cilantro topping. No messing around. Great cheese, not slipshod cheese.

 

This is what I wrote way back then in September 2013.

This soup contains an interesting unexpected underworld of hidden raw vegetables and green chorizo, a rich smooth and balanced body of liquified earthily elements, root vegetables, topped with a deep nutty cheese available to melt readily, and breathily aromatic herb. The combination of a salad like this inside a soup like this is wrongly, achingly, naïvely successfully satisfying.  

Win.

Ha. Who even writes like that?

But it's true.