Week 1: Kale soup

First week, and we're making kale soup!

They say kale is an extremely healthy vegetable - but who cares about that, really, when it's so delicious! I don't know if/how they eat kale in other countries, but here, it's usually mashed with potatoes or made into a rather lovely stew with pork and/or chorizo. However, it also lends itself well to soups, as you'll see. The GW2 version is vegan, which comes in handy... if you want to serve it to a vegan, I suppose.

You can make your own vegetable stock by boiling 1,5 liters of water with chopped carrots, celery, onion and salt for about an hour and then straining it, but you can also take the lazy/practical way  out (like I do) and use stock cubes. If you are making stock from scratch, you can just add the herbs in with the vegetables and strain them out before moving on to the soup proper.

Kale soup

Ingredients (8 servings):

1.2 liters vegetable stock

300 g kale, finely cut

1 large or 2 small potatoes

1 large or 2 small onions

1/4 tsp dried or 1 sprig fresh rosemary*

1/4 tsp dried or 2 leaves fresh sage*

1/4 tsp dried or 1 sprig fresh thyme*

2 bay leaves

Salt, pepper, oil

Chop the onions. Heat a bit of oil in a large pot and gently sauté the onions until they are translucent. Add the stock and the herbs and bring to the boil. Add the kale - if it won't all fit in the pan, be patient, as the kale will shrink when boiled and you'll be able to add the rest then. Peel the potatoes and chop into 1.5 cm cubes. Add to the pot. Boil on a low heat for about 20-25 minutes. Remove the bay leaves. With a handheld blender or in a food processor, puree to taste - I prefer my soup to be fairly chunky, but you can puree until completely smooth at this stage. Slice the smoked chicken breast, add to the pot and warm through. Season to taste. Garnish with some extra smoked chicken breast

Tip! For a bit of extra bite, add some shredded smoked chicken breast (as in photograph) or some diced chorizo! Dice 100 g of chorizo sausage and fry it (without oil) until crisp. Remove from the pan and place on some kitchen towels to absorb the extra fat. If you like, you can sauté the onions in the fat left in the pan and then transfer them to a large pot to make the soup.

*: If you don't have this, don't fret: the recipe works without it too