Skip to main content

Portuguese Potato and Kale Soup

Portuguese Potato and Kale Soup

What will strike you about today's soup from The Soup Book is how green it is. I'm remarking on it only because it starts out white. The recipe is by Sophie Grigson, who writes that this type of soup is "ubiquitous" in Portugal. If you can't get curly kale, other options are cavolo nero or Savoy cabbage. The other ingredients are potatoes, garlic, onion and chorizo. 
Potato, garlic and onion


Puréed potato, garlic and onion

Curly kale, washed, shredded and ready



Portuguese potato and kale soup with chorizo
I placed the sliced potatoes, garlic and onion in a large saucepan with water and seasoning. While these simmered, I prepared the curly kale. A fiddly operation, involving cutting out the stalks, rolling up the leaves and shredding them. By this time the potatoes were very tender so I puréed that mixture and put the bowls in the oven to warm. The last five minutes or so saw me simmering the shredded kale and slice chorizo in the potato soup. Then it was time to dish up and eat. I liked it very much. The spouse and younger offspring were not unenthusiastic.

What's the Buzz?

During the week I received an alert from the County Dublin Beekeepers' Association, reminding me about forthcoming events. The association's next beekeeping course begins on 7th February. Also coming up is Apimondia's international bee health conference in March.

My current read (or re-read) is Tracey Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring. (Didn't you just love the film!) My copy of the book is ten years old. I don't remember if I bought it myself or was given it as a present. Five paragraphs in you will find a bee simile:

The woman [Vermeer's wife] looked as if she had been blown about by the wind, although it was a calm day. Her cap was askew so that tiny blonde curls escaped and hung about her forehead like bees which she swatted at impatiently several times. 
Sexual jealousy is a theme of the novel and these lines reveal the narrator's jealousy of Vermeer's wife Catharina:

And as difficult as Catharina could be, I had often seen him look at her, touch her shoulder, speak to her in a low voice laced with honey. 

Time to go.

Minnie





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuscan Bean Soup

Tuscan Bean Soup This recipe calls for canned beans (borlotti, flageolet or cannellini) and as I have been tidying and cleaning out our cupboards I've used cannellini beans. I have to mention that the younger offspring has done an impressive job on the cupboards. That's enough about him. Back to me and my soup! Other ingredients include onion, carrots, leek, garlic, tomatoes, tomato puree (I substituted sun-dried tomato paste as there was an open jar of it in the fridge), chicken stock (I had to use a cube as my home-made reserves have been used up) and spinach.When ready it's served with ciabatta bread, grated Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. So it's quite a rich soup. We've just had the Tuscan bean soup for lunch. All enjoyed it. The adult males were particularly forthcoming in their praise. The spouse liked the "tomato-ey sharpness" and mused that ham stock should be considered as an alternative to chicken stock. Bees' Cheese and other recipes H
Post a Comment
Read more

Lovage Soup

Lovage Soup   Today I made lovage soup, the second recipe by Sophie Grigson in The Soup Book that I have used in the last four days. She introduces the recipe with these remarks: "If you don't grow this old-fashioned herb yourself, ask around among your gardening friends or head down to the nearest garden centre to see if they sell it. " As I mentioned in my last blog entry (18th May), lovage now features among the herbs in my front garden. As the spouse left the camera at home, I took some photographs. Parsley, sorrel and lovage in Minnie's garden. Rosemary, parsley and lovage in Minnie's garden.  I had hoped to add chervil to my collection of herbs - there's a recipe for vegetable and chervil soup in The Soup Book - but "Young Stephen" wasn't able to source any for me. At least he tried. Just while I'm mentioning Stephen, I have to reveal that the spouse and the older offspring claim that he has been mention
1 comment
Read more

Mulligatawny Manoeuvres

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave
Post a Comment
Read more