Kale Soup

After my last blogpost I had a few comments about my maligning of kale (although it's funny, people seem quite happy to cast disparaging words against offal and few raise their voices to come to its aid...) so I thought that I'd have a go at making a kale soup recipe to come to terms with my dislike of said vegetable.

Before we start, I should point out that I have nothing really against kale itself, but just that it seems to be the poster vegetable for the whole healthier-than-thou/no-fun strain of diets and recipes, and it really does look like swamp water when it's blended to make a soup or (ugh) smoothie (why? why would you do that to yourself?) 

Veg, fruit, steak, eggs and buns!

Every few weeks we here at Soup Labs get a rather brilliant veg box, delivered to our door (along with amazing steaks and cream buns) by the wonderful Market Delivered* and it nearly always has a bunch of kale in it.  As Mother Soup didn't bring me up to waste food (or be late for anything. Ever) I keep trying to find fun things to do with it.  This soup recipe is one of the fruits of my labours.  It turned out pretty nice actually, athough the addition of some bacon or maybe blue cheese/cream would have tipped it towards brilliance.  It still looks like something from the Planet Dagobah though...

*Check their website to see if they deliver to your neighbourhood - especially if you're in Leeds.  Cream buns! Steaks! Delivered to your door, from local shops! Brilliant! Running out of exclamation marks!!!!

Ingredients
150g Kale
150g Potatoes
1 Onion
3 Cloves Garlic
25g Butter
900ml Chicken Stock
200ml Milk
150ml White Wine

Method
1. Peel the onion and potato, then cut into small chunks.

2.  Heat the butter in your soup pan.  Cook the vegetables until they start to soften.  Add the finely chopped garlic cloves and cook for another couple of minutes

3.  Add the stock and wine, bring the soup to a simmer.  Remove the tough stalks from the kale and shred the leaves.  Add these to the soup and cover, cooking for 20 minutes. 

4.  Once the soup is cooked, remove from the heat and allow to cool, then purée using a stick blender.

5.  Reheat the soup, add the milk and adjust seasoning to taste.  Serve and enjoy!

Russian Kale Soup with Smoked Sausage

Well, the nights are drawing in and I've noticed a lot of people saying it's Soup Season.  Well, guess what, here at Soup Tuesday, it never stops being soup season.  I never seem to be one for seasonal dishes anyway.  I eat stews in the middle of summer and salads in the snow.  It's all good to me.

However, what I do enjoy at this time of year is the later crops that arrive, like turnips, swede, big carrots and dark cabbages.  Today's soup involves just one of these, but it's my favourite!.  As I'm on a bit of a crusade to make soups from the more un-loved soups, I remembered when I was a kid and my favourite dish was Steak and Kidney pie (Still is my favourite actually) and my Mum would always serve it with a type of cabbage that I just can't seem to find anywhere any more - it had dark green leaves like a savoy, but was smooth, and had a taste that was almost bitter.  If anyone knows what variety it was, or even where to get my hands on said cabbage, I would love you for ever and dedicate a soup to you...

In lieu of that cabbage, I am including Kale in tonight's soup, which is a hearty winter warmer to get you in the mood for longer evenings, snow drifts and mince pies in the shops (I know they are already there, which is good news, bring on Xmas...)  Kale is pretty simialr in taste to the cabbage I remember from being a kid, and I know that its flavour is not to everyone's taste, but I like it as it has the strong, almost bitter thing going on, and is a prefect complement to the smoked sausage that goes into the soup as well

Ingredients
1 Onion
1 Large Bunch of Red Kale
200g Smoked Sausage
1 Tin Tomatoes
1 Tin Borlotti Beans
3 Cloves Chopped Garlic
1tsp Chopped Fresh Rosemary
1tsp Chopped Sage Leaves
1.2l Chicken Stock
Salt & Pepper

Method
1.  Heat some olive oil in your soup pan.  Gently fry the  finely onion, garlic, rosemary and sage for 3-5 minutes, until the onion starts to colour

2. Add the tomatoes and stock, then bring to to boil

3.   Finely shred the kale, removing the stalks, and add this to the soup, as well as the beans and 2/3s of the sausage, cut into cubes.

4.  Bring the soup to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes, until the kale has completely cooked and softened.

5.  Slice the remaining sausage and fry this in some oil until it starts to brown.

6.  Check the seasoning of the soup, serve in warm bowls with a couple of the fried sausage slices on top.  Enjoy!

Caldo Verde Soup

For an experiment, I randomly bought some vegetables and then had a look around for a soup recipe that used them.  The vegetable I bought was some lovely dark kale, which I decided to make into the Portugese soup called Caldo Verde.  I had some chorizo sausage that Mrs Soup brought back from a work trip to Belgium of all places and some stock that I made from last Sunday's roast chicken left-overs, so this soup was rather economical, and also very tasty