I have recently rediscovered the taco as a homemade dinner option. Jury’s still out on how this discovery will affect my overall health, but on all other fronts – flavor, ease, cost, deliciousness – I’m pretty happy with it. It’s no wonder tacos were a staple of our childhood dinners. They’re so easy! While even your basic taco-kit Tex-Mex taco can be delicious, gourmet tacos are next level. You know, the kind that successful food trucks all over the US are dedicated to – with soft flour tortillas wrapped around spicy barbacoa and pickled onions and freshly made salsa. The kind that makes you feel like you’re standing on a street corner in Mexico, watching life go by and soaking up the sun.

These tacos are more of the grown-up, gourmet variety (although with a couple throwbacks to the childhood Tex-Mex version). Instead of ground beef and “taco spice” I make them with fresh Mexican-style chorizo sausage. The mixture of the mildly-spiced chorizo, sweet onion, and corn makes up the bulk of the filling. They come together in no-time, maybe 20 minutes from “I want tacos!” to biting into your first one. So if you’re going for a 30-minute dinner, you’ll still have 10 minutes left to shake up a margarita.

What takes these chorizo tacos over the top for me is griddling the tortillas in the leftover chorizo fat. They turn golden brown and a little crispy, and if you melt a bit of cheddar cheese in the center at the same time you are ready for taco heaven. Quality toppings also up the ante here. A generous amount of sliced avocado, fancy salsa, and sour cream all come together to give you the perfect amount of savory-spicy-rich-sweetness in each bite. I’ve been making these with the chorizo that comes in our Walden Local Meat Company subscription, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be on our table at least once a month. From now until… forever.

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Corn and Chorizo Tacos

Easy and delicious Corn and Chorizo Tacos, on your table in 30 minutes. Fry the corn tortillas until crispy and golden brown for an extra decadent meal.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 4

Ingredients

• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 lb. fresh, Mexican-style chorizo sausage
• 1 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 8 small corn tortillas
• 6 oz. cheddar cheese, thinly sliced
• 1 or 2 ripe avocados, peeled and thinly sliced, for topping
• salsa, for topping
• sour cream, for topping

Instructions

1. In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and saute until translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Remove the sausage from its casing and crumble into the pan. Use the back of a wooden spoon to chop it into small pieces. Saute, stirring frequently, until fully cooked and crispy on the outside, about 8-10 minutes. Add the frozen corn and cook for another 2-3 minutes, then transfer the stuffing mixture to a bowl, leaving most of the oil/drippings in the pan.
2. Working with one or two tortillas at a time, add the tortillas to the hot grease and cook until golden brown on the first side, about 60-90 seconds, then flip the tortilla over to cook the second side. While the second side is cooking, place a few pieces of cheddar cheese on top of the tortilla so that it melts into the tortilla. Remove from the heat when cheese is melted and both sides of tortilla are golden brown. Repeat with the remaining tortillas.
3. Fill the cheesy tortillas with the chorizo and corn mixture, then top each taco with sliced avocado, salsa, and sour cream. Serve immediately.

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People ask me all the time what my favorite thing to cook is. Once they find out that I’m a food blogger, it’s one of the first questions I get. For a long time, I didn’t know how to answer. Having a favorite thing to eat is one thing, but a favorite thing to cook? Do people have just one favorite dish to prepare? What if my favorite thing to cook changes weekly?

After years of thought, I have an answer: soup. Making soup is methodical and creative and easy. There’s something ritualistic and comforting about preparing it. It almost always starts with the same few steps – chopping an onion and sauteing it in olive oil, peeling and dicing vegetables, pulling out my favorite spices and flavorings. But from there, soup allows infinite creative possibilities. If I’m feeling healthy I’ll make a soup of lentils and vegetables and wholesome broth. For particularly cold days, a chili with lots of meat and beans and plenty of cheddar cheese is my go-to. Pureed vegetable bisques are elegant and great with fresh bread, and when I’m sick nothing but homemade chicken broth with egg noodles will do. I rarely use recipes, and the result is almost always good. And so, soup is my favorite thing to cook.

I’ll eat soup at any time of year, but it appears on our table most frequently during the winter months. From December until March you’ll find me making homemade chicken broth on the weekends, then experimenting with different soup recipes during the week. My most recent experiment resulted in a soup I loved so much that I immediately recreated it to share with you. It’s a Spicy Chorizo Soup with Israeli Couscous, made with fresh Mexican-style chorizo sausage, white beans and carrots and fennel seeds. But the real secret to this soup is a spoonful or two of mole sauce stirred into the soup just at the end. The mole gives the soup a little more heat and a lot more flavor – a bit of sweetness, some chocolatey notes, and a little nuttiness.

I just happened to have extra mole sauce in my freezer after making this Mole-Roasted Chicken, but I know that’s not a particularly common ingredient to have laying around. If you don’t have any, substitute another spicy chile paste, preferably one with some sweetness and depth of flavor. I think harissa would work well. Get ready to feel warm inside and out after a bowl or two of this!

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Craving more soup recipes? Here are a few favorites:

Black Bean Soup with Roasted Poblano

Sweet Potato and Coconut Milk Soup with Brown Rice and Lentils

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Spicy Chorizo Soup with Israeli Couscous and Mole Sauce

A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe.

• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1/2 lb fresh Mexican-style chorizo sausage
• 1 medium onion, peeled and cut into small pieces
• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
• 3/4 cup Israeli couscous
• 3 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch round slices
• 1 cup cooked cannelini beans
• 6 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
• 1 TBS plus 1 tsp cheater’s mole sauce or other spicy chile paste

1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the fresh chorizo to the oil, removing the meat from its casings by squeezing it out with your hands into the pot. Use the back of a wooden spoon to break the sausage up into small pieces. Cook until the chorizo is browned all over, about 6-8 minutes, then add the onion and fennel seeds. Saute, stirring frequently, until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the couscous to the pot and stir to coat with the oil and chorizo juices. Toast in the oil for 1-2 minutes, stirring, then add the carrots, cannelini beans, and chicken stock to the pot. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook until the carrots are tender, about 20 minutes.
3. Just before serving, stir in the mole sauce or spicy chile paste. Taste and add more chile paste if desired. Serve immediately.

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Reading all of the blog posts out there about the end of summer is making me a bit sad. Fall is and has always been my favorite season, and I’m also guilty of having started writing my farewells to heat and long days and tomatoes, but now I’m feeling torn. Amidst all the manic travel and moving and house buying and WORK, did I miss summer? I think I might have. And there’s no going back now – the seasons are the seasons and they move whether we like it or not. We have no choice but to walk along with them – that or fly to the other side of the world. But I can tell you with certainty, having visited the other side of the world quite a bit this year, that another place’s summer is not quite the same as your own summer. Especially not a New England summer, that desperately awaited and gloriously sweet reward for New England winters.

The only thing for it, I think, is to enjoy all the time I do have here in the next month – to embrace the hot and humid days that still feel like August with the same enthusiasm that I enjoy blustery autumn ones and damp and drizzly ones. To go to the beach when it’s hot and photograph the leaves when they turn and drink chai lattes while wearing oversized sweaters when it’s gray and damp. The fact that I need to travel for work is not going to change in the near term, but what I do with my time at home is my decision. I’m not saying that every day is going to be great or that all my daily responsibilities are going to disappear, but the least I can do is enjoy each day for what it is.

One other thing I did about all this summer’s ending melancholy? Buy as much sweet corn and peaches as I could carry home at the farmer’s market. There’s really nothing like sweet corn eaten the same day it was picked – it doesn’t even need to be cooked. When I was sitting on the porch shucking it I couldn’t resist taking a couple of bites out of each ear to test the sweetness, and boy is it sweet right now.

Sunday was cool and drizzly all day, and all I could think about was soup and freshly baked bread. The new oven is so spotlessly clean and works so well that it’s making me dive head-first back into cooking, and part of me was sort of grateful to the drizzly weather for giving me an excuse to bake and roast the afternoon away (see? appreciating each day for what it is!). We turned the abundance of corn into a sweet and slightly spicy corn soup, topped with a deeply savory corn, chorizo, and manchego cheese mixture. The soup base is extremely simple – olive oil, onions, garlic, broth and raw corn kernels, simmered briefly then pureed into a sweet and frothy soup. The topping is a bit more complex, made from corn roasted on the cob with a generous slather of harissa-butter, then cut from the cob and tossed with hot chorizo. The sweet, salty, spicy balance on this was just right, and the fresh buttermilk rolls that Trevor made to go with it was like the icing on the cake. And it matched my feelings, too: corn because summer’s not over yet, soup because fall has already begun. It’s all a balance.

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Harissa-Butter Roasted Corn Soup with Chorizo

Serves 3-4

• 4 ears of corn
• 1 1/2 tsp harissa (jarred with olive oil, not ground spice)
• 1 TBS butter, room temperature
• sea salt to taste
• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 c. chicken or vegetable broth
• 4 oz. fresh chorizo sausage
• 1 oz. manchego cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Husk the corn. In a small bowl, mix together the harissa, butter, and a pinch of sea salt. Place 2 ears of the corn on a large sheet of tinfoil and rub all over with the harissa butter. Close the tinfoil to make a package and place on top of a baking sheet. Roast the corn in the foil for 20-25 minutes, until tender.
2. Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 2 minutes longer. Use a serrated knife to cut the kernels off of the remaining 2 ears of corn, then add the kernels to the saute and saute for 2 minutes. Add the broth and bring to a simmer. Snap the corn cobs in half and add to the pot. Simmer for about 20 minutes, then remove the corn cobs from the pot and discard. Transfer the soup to a blender and blend on high until it is a smooth and slightly thick puree. Return to the pot and set aside, keeping warm over low heat until ready to serve.
3. When the roasted corn is done, remove from the oven and let cool until it is comfortable to touch. Use a serrated knife to cut the corn kernels off of the cobs. Set the kernels aside. Heat a frying pan over medium heat, and crumble the chorizo into it in bite-sized pieces. Cook the chorizo, stirring frequently, until it is browned on all sides and cooked through. Add the roasted corn and toss to coat with the chorizo, and cook for 2-3 minutes or until corn is heated through. Season to taste with salt, then transfer the mixture to a bowl.
4. Ladle the smooth corn soup into bowls. Divide the roasted corn and chorizo mixture between bowls, piling it into the center of the soup. Top each bowl with a few pieces of thinly sliced manchego cheese, and serve immediately with crusty bread or freshly-baked rolls.

The post Summer Goodbye // Harissa-Butter Roasted Corn Soup with Chorizo appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

The big day is almost here! I’m headed home for the holiday (and bringing this cake and this salad with me), but I wanted to say a quick hello first and share with you this yummy little recipe I’ve put together for Greatist. When you all come out of your turkey and mashed potato comas, give this hash a try. It’s got brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, roasted chestnuts, chorizo, and goat cheese – in other words, health and flavor. The perfect thing to ease you back into normal eating habits without depriving you of deliciousness. Just please don’t forget a sunny-side up egg to top it off – the runny yolk oozing into the warm hash lifts this dish from good to great. You can find the full recipe here.

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

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