Patatas Bravas Soup

I love a good roast dinner.  It's the best meal of the week,  even if it doesn't contain dumplings.  It does, however, contain two of the greatest foodstuffs known to man (if you're doing it right, anyway) which are : Gravy and Roast Potatoes.  It's always been on my mind to try and create a Sunday Roast soup, but whilst beavering away in the soup lab (do beavers eat soup? I imagine they have little flasks of tree bark soup that they eat after a long day's dam making and gnawing) I came across this little beauty of a recipe.

Tapas seemed to be one of those culinary phases that came and went in the 90's as far as I remember, apart from if you live in Spain possibly, and it always seemed way too expensive for my pocket, lined as it usually is with lint rather than gold, so I never really got into it (3 quid for a little plat of olives and some squid?!? my northern tight-wad genes would make me exclaim)

So this is a soup-ified version of a tapas dish, which is basically a roast potato soup.  Carnivores could (and probably should) add some chroizo* to the soup to make it extra tasty, but this recipe was made during meat-free May, so we kept it strictly veggie.

*Also, use vegetable stock.  (What do you mean, I don't seem to have grasped the fundemental tennets of vegtarianism?)

Ingredients
500g Potatoes
900ml Chicken Stock
1 Can Tomatoes
1 Large Onion
75ml Sherry
3 Cloves of garlic
2tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1tbsp Paprika
1tsp Cayenne Pepper
1tsp Fresh Thyme
1tsp Fresh Rosemary

Method
1. Heat the oven to 200ºc. Peel the potatoes and cut into small cubes.

2.  Fill a pan with water and add some salt, then bring to the boil.  Put the potatoes in and cook until they are starting to go soft.  This should only take about 5 minutes, but keep an eye on the pan as you don't want them to cook too much.

3.  Put a large baking tray in the oven with some cooking oil in it and let it heat.

4.  Once the potatoes are cooked, let them drain thoroughly.  Then place them in the oil and put the tray back in the oven to let the potatoes roast.  This should take about 30 minutes, until the edges of the potatoes are nice and brown.  Again, keep checking the oven to make sure they aren't over cooking.

5. In your soup pan, heat some more oil.  Peel and finely chop the garlic and onion, then add them to the pan, cooking until they are soft and start to colour.

6.  Add the balsamic vinegar and sherry then allow to reduce until the liquid has halved.  next add the paprika, cayenne, thyme and rosemary and allow to cook for another minute or two.

7.  Take the roast potatoes out of the oven and drain on some kitchen towel, then add these to the soup, along with the tomatoes and the chicken stock.

8. Allow the soup to come to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.

9.  Garnish with a scattering of fresh thyme.  Serve and enjoy!