This recipe is inspired by the traditional Portuguese soup known as caldo verde (which means “green broth”), a soup that can be traced back to the north of the country in the mid 15th century, as explained by Taste Braga.
This is the same region that brought us the dry, summery flavours of vinho verde. Try it out when you’re looking for a soup with extra weight and heat.
Yield: a hungry family of four, with leftovers for lunch the next day
Recipe
- 4 sausages
- 1 onion
- 5 potatoes
- a large bunch of kale
- a whole carton of low salt broth
- extra water (e.g. 2 cups) to increase the volume of the soup and adjust salt levels
- a couple cloves of garlic
- 1/4 teaspoon of hot chili peppers
Method of preparation
-To begin, put the sausages on a barbeque or cook them steadily in a frying pan. The type you use (such as chouriço/chorizo, linguiça, or hot Italian) depends on the flavour and level of spiciness you desire. These could also be substituted for vegetarian alternatives (e.g. Beyond Sausage) as desired.
Check that the sausages are fully cooked with a meat thermometer (71 Celsius for pork, 74 Celsius for chicken) and keep them warm.
-Dice a whole onion and sauté it in another frying pan until it’s soft and browned.
-Take the bunch of kale, rinse it thoroughly in the sink, and put it in a colander. Shake out the water from the leaves and pull the leaves off of the stalks. As mentioned previously in Eesti Elu, stalks like these can be kept and cooked later. Put the kale leaves to the side for now.
-Finely mince the cloves of garlic and add this to the onion pan.
-Take the potatoes, wash them (no need to peel), and cut them into cubes. Put the potato pieces into a large soup pot.
-Pour the broth and additional water into the soup pot and bring the liquid to a boil, then bring the heat down to low and cook the potatoes until they’re soft, for approximately 15 minutes. As an alternative to broth from a carton, you can make your own broth by boiling down and straining the bones of a whole leftover chicken with an equivalent amount of water.
-Bring back the kale and roughly chop it into slices on a board, before adding it to the soup pot with the potatoes. Boil the mixture for another five minutes before reducing the temperature again.
-Add a quarter teaspoon of hot chili peppers (dry or in olive oil as sold by stores and restaurants like Terroni). Sriracha hot sauce is another option.
-Use an immersion blender to purée part of the soup mixture so far. Leave some of the soup unblended so that you can still enjoy the rough kale and potato pieces.
-Cut the cooked sausage into slices and add it to the soup pot, mixing it around before serving the soup in everyone’s bowls.
This soup will warm you up nicely from the inside and leave you satisfied. Still, let it cool a little bit before you eat so that you get to slowly savour the sausage, potato, and kale flavours all together.
