The other day we invited ourselves round to our friends' house to swim in their pool and, of course, eat. We would be in charge of the food and they would provide the pool. It turned out to be a massively rainy day so the pool was a bust, but we cooked and ate a huge amount. All told, we had 13 people but we could have fed twice that.
I made my tourtiere, which is evolving further and further away from a tourtiere, my Boston baked beans in my new cast iron enamel pot (no, not Le Creuset ), a mxed berry crumble and homemade vanilla ice cream. Teresa made her famous lumpia, a very labour-intensive Filipino spring roll with potato, bean sprout, shrip, preserved tofu and shredded pork, all with a nice soy-lemon-garlic sauce, plus her famous noodles using shrimp, pork, celery and eggs. Everything was delicious and everyone was happy.
We did have about five whole cooked potatoes left over and when i was wondering what to do with them, I thought of caldo verde.
Caldo verde is a soup that I discovered on my trips to Macau and ate at the most of many very good Portuguese restaurants there. It looks like this:
It is deceptively easy to make. So much so that I spent a lot of time checking several recipes to see if I had missed something. I hadn't.
You boil four or five potatoes in a pot, along with two or three cloves of garlic, salt, a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a whole onion. Once the potatoes are done, blend the whole thing with an immersion blender till it is a smooth puree. You might add some water so it is not so gluey at this stage.
While still bubbling, add a bunch of finely shredded kale. The finer you can shred it the better. I did mine about 1/4 inch thick and it wasn't thin enough in my opinion.
Simmer for ten minutes or so or until the kale is cooked (the thinner you slice it the faster this will happen). Then, you drop in some sliced chorizo. How much is up to you and depending on how much soup you have. But I'd plan on three or four slices per person myself. At the last minute, adjust the seasoning, add some more olive oil and serve. Some nice crusty bread seems a fairly obvious accompaniment.
Like I said, it seems almost too simple. And I am sure there are several versions out there that use stock, or almonds, or tofu or beef or something .. but this does seem to be a very common one, and one that appears on a lot of Portuguese sites I checked.
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