Yesterday was the first day of autumn, and it lingers in the air. I’ve already gotten my butter croissant candles out, washed our fluffy blankets, and I am fully embracing maroon as a colour for my wardrobe. And I thought I´d kick off the season with a recipe for my favourite Portuguese soup – the caldo verde. I confess that this soup intimidated me at first. I love cooking Romanian sour soups (ciorba) and actually make some pretty tasty ones, but soups to me are such an intimate heritage of a region that I very often stay away from the really traditional ones, quietly admiring them from afar. That was the case with caldo verde until last winter, when I ventured to do one, following the recipe from Portugal The Cookbook, the same recipe book I took this Pão de Ló recipe from. I confess I have since adjusted both ingredients as well as method quite a bit and here´s my final take on the caldo verde.
Ingredients
five large potatoes
one large onion
two garlic cloves
250g collard greens (couve galega ideally)
a chouriço (the one I personally liked most in this combo is the porco preto chouriço)
2l of water
olive oil
salt
Instructions
1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks. Peel the onion and slice it (roughly). Also peel the garlic, but do not crush it.
2. In a large pot add some olive oil and sautée the chopped onion and garlic until golden, then add the chopped potatoes and sautée for another couple of minutes.
3. Add the 2l of water on top, a tablespoon of salt, and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling add the sausage and let it all boil for ten minutes before removing the sausage.
4. Boil the potatoes for another 15 minutes while slicing the sausage and putting it aside. Note: you can pierce the potatoes with a fork to see when they’re tender enough to stop the fire, you don´t need to wait 15 min unless they’re not boiled.
5. Blend the whole thing with a vertical mixer until smooth and then add the collard greens (or couve galega). Put the whole thing back on the stove continue boiling until the greens are soft. Taste and adjust the salt if needed.
6. Serve with a couple of slices of sausage in each plate and some broa de milho on the side if you have any.
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