Recipe: Kale and Potato Soup

I'm on a leafy-greens kick these days, and I'm also on a soup kick, so I decided to try to make some Caldo Verde on the weekend. Usually caldo verde is flavoured with some chorizo sausage, but I couldn't find any at the supermarket on a moment's notice, plus I kind of put the whole thing together on the fly, so I think I'll just refer to it as Kale and Potato soup instead. It certainly doesn't look like the stuff in the picture (which I stole from some restaurant's menu).

I started by dicing up a large sweet onion and putting the stock pot on medium heat. I sauteed up the onion with some olive oil and minced garlic for about 5 minutes, until they got translucent. In the meanwhile, I peeled and cubed 2 medium-sized baking potatoes. Once the onions were done, I dumped the potatoes in and mushed them around for a couple minutes. Then I added about 8 cups of water, turned the heat up to high start the water boiling, then turned the heat down to low, covering and simmering.

In lieu of the chorizo, I had two hot italian sausages which I started frying up at this point. In the meanwhile, I started washing and preparing a couple big bunches of kale (with some help). I ripped the leaves off the stems and cut them into thin slices, and chopped the thinner stems into small chunks, discarding thick stems. By the time this was all done, the potatoes were pretty mushy so I threw the kale stems in.

About 5 minutes after I threw the kale stems in, the sausages were about done so I cut them into about 5mm thick slices. I took an immersion blender and pureed the potatoes and kale, then threw in the sausage slices for about 3 minutes. Then I threw in the kale leaves and let them simmer for another 7 or 8 minutes. Finally, I threw in some chopped parsley to give it some fragrance, and added some salt and pepper to taste.

The soup turned out pretty well. The kale gives a nice crunchiness to the soup, and it tastes very fresh and green too. Next time, I'll mix in a bit of chicken stock for a bit more flavour in the soup itself, 'cause I ended up having to add a decent amount of salt. Also, I don't think the hot italians were a great substitute for the chorizo. If I can't find chorizo in the future, I think I'll try a dry sausage like pepperoni.