caldo verde

There are some recipes that I've adopted as comfort food having never grown up with them. Being with my husband for over 13 years, I've grown to love food he grew up with to the point it's nostalgic. Rice pudding and tuna noodle casserole are a couple of examples, but Caldo Verde (potato soup with collards and chorizo) is my favourite of all the Portuguese soups. It's served at traditional Portuguese weddings, but I find it's just the perfect platform to enjoy chorizo sausage. 

I love the flavour of my in-laws homemade chorizo. We had it last week on pizza and it was so great it reminded me about caldo verde soup, so I mentioned to Nuno we should try and make it. Funny how things work out because we were not only to see my in-laws this past weekend, but they happened to be smoking their chorizo right as we arrived at their home.

I love this soup because it's the quickest and simplest dinner you can imagine.

Caldo Verde

1 onion, diced

3 baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks

6 cups of water or broth (any combination of)

1 tsp salt

1 bunch of collard greens (ribs and stems removed)

1 chorizo sausage (cooked and cooled - sliced thin as possible)

Sautee onion in olive oil. Add potatoes and broth/water and bring to a boil with salt. Simmer until potato is tender, 10 - 20 minutes depending on size of potato chunks. 

Meanwhile, roll collard greens and slice thinly in a chiffonade. Unravel and roughly chop. Rinse several times to clean and remove some of the pigment. 

Puree soup with immersion blender. Add collards and cook until tender. Serve with several slices of chorizo and season to taste.