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

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