Caldo Verde (soup) 12-18-2015
 

I made Caldo Verde last night. If you've never made it, DO! It's a
great winter soup. Most recipes seem to call for Spanish chorizo and I
don't know why (it always tastes spoiled to me anyway). Caldo Verde is
Portuguese, so I used an American made linguiça. I had just made
chicken stock, so I used half stock and half water. I didn't bother
cleaning out the (small) crockpot and just put things in it as I
prepared them.

I cut the sausage into quarters lengthwise and sliced it about the
thickness of the top of my chef's knife and sauteed (but didn't brown)
it in just a tablespoon or two of EVOO with a smallish onion, finely
diced. Don't toss the fats, everything goes into the crockpot! The
potatoes (2 med. yellow waxy) were cut into small dice and boiled in
the water that would be the water half of the soup. You want that
starchy water, I had potato starch on hand to add if I wanted thicker
soup - but it was just the right amount.

Last, but not least was the kale. I bought a bag of pre-chopped kale
thinking I would save time - don't do it. I spent too much time taking
out big stems. The traditional way to do it (where labor is cheap) is
to strip out the stems. roll the leaves and chiffonade the kale, very
thinly - again about a knife-blade thick. Super pretty to eat, but I
didn't have the patience for that.

Looking at recipes, I pretty much used the Leite's Culinaria
ingredients (with added dried chili/pizza peppers for heat, because
that's how it was seasoned when I ate it the first time and I liked it
that way)... but not his method.
http://leitesculinaria.com/7580/reci...ldo-verde.html

Slices of a nice rosemary focaccia would have been great with it, but
hindsight is 20-20. http://www.oliviascuisine.com/rosemary-focaccia/

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sf