A Good Kale Soup, Maybe with a Weed in It

Beedy's Camden gorgeous Kale thriving in the garden.

Beedy’s Camden gorgeous Kale thriving in the garden.

You probably have some lamb's quarters growing in your garden. Weed it and eat.

You probably have some lamb’s quarters growing in your garden. Weed it and eat.

Last fall I failed to clean up the garden thoroughly. Maybe you remember how quickly winter came on. I never pulled out the kale plants; they are biennials but I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, good, let’s get another season out of these.” Still, that is the upshot. I have a lovely row of Beedy’s Camden kale, as fresh, tender and wholesomely green as can be.

And there is something else as fresh, tender and wholesomely green as kale out there: lamb’s quarters. Usually, we regard that as a weed, but anciently, it was cultivated and eaten. Along with other early spring greens, lamb’s quarter is best picked when very young, or else gathered from tender growing tips by anyone adventurous enough to try it. Which wasn’t me until only very recently.

The kale soup I make is based roughly on a Portuguese-style soup with a ham bone, ham, chorizo sausage, potatoes, onions, chickpeas and lots of kale. I let it vary all over the place. I’ve substituted white beans and black beans for the chickpeas. If I go a vegetarian route, I use plain tap or potato cooking water. If I don’t have chorizo, I use breakfast sausage and add red pepper and garlic to the seasonings. If I don’t have kale, I use spinach or cabbage. Since I am not trying to win any authenticity contests with this soup, it really doesn’t matter as long as I’m working a little formula that says, “onions and garlic plus starchy vege plus dried legume plus leafy greens plus, salted meat or not.”

I treat the kale like spinach: I tear the tender parts of the leaf away from the tough stem. Same goes for the lamb’s quarters; pluck the leaves off the stem. If the kale or lamb’s quarters stems are tender, I just roll it up in a wad and shred it with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors. I usually add the greens a few minutes before serving the soup so they wilt but don’t have time to get mushy. If they get soft, it is no big whoop: all the minerals will have escaped into the soup where they will do you lots of good.

Tender lamb's quarter off the stem ready for shredding.

Tender lamb’s quarter off the stem ready for shredding.

A Good Kale Soup
 
Ingredients
  • Ham bone or broth made with ham bone
  • Sausage of your choice, bulk or stripped from its casing
  • Onion, chopped
  • Garlic, minced
  • Bits of ham
  • One medium potato per person, diced
  • About a quarter of a cup of cooked chickpeas per person
  • Oregano to taste
  • Red pepper to taste (optional)
  • A handful of kale and/or lamb’s quarters
  • Salt and pepper
Instructions
  1. Simmer the ham bone covered with water until all remaining bits of meat fall off the bone. Remove the bone.
  2. Meanwhile, in a soup pot, sauté the sausage until fat begins to run, then add the onion and garlic and cook until the onions softens.
  3. Add the broth to the sausage and onion mixture, and add any bits of ham you wish to use.
  4. Add the potato, chickpeas, and seasonings, and -bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the temperature to a simmer. Cook until the potatoes are tender.
  5. Shred the kale and lamb’s quarters and add to the soup. Add salt and pepper. Keep soup hot until the leafy vegetables are wilted.
  6. Serve with croutons if desired.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.