Collard-Potato Soup

Because nothing calls for a steaming hot bowl of soup like a 105 degree July evening in Arizona.

Times like this, I think I must be out-of-touch with my environment. I used to love going for ice cream during winter in Seattle. Or does that make me in-touch with my environment? Perhaps I just want to be feeling on the inside what I'm feeling on the outside. Helps with intra-body communication. Or maybe body-to-Earth communication. Either way it gets everyone on the same playing field, and I'm starting to sound like a communist, so I'm going to move on.

It was a stock-up-for-the-week cooking day. Earlier on, I made pinwheel cookies for the first time. I used the recipe from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins.



They were crisp and light, but the chocolate flavor was strong. To be fair, I used vanilla extract instead of the bean like they called for, but I don't know if a bean would have mellowed out the chocolate any better. I used Dutch cocoa... maybe next time I'll use natural and see if it helps. Or add some almond extract. Or peppermint. Or orange. But no. Digression.

Supposedly I'm blogging about soup today, so here goes. This soup is so... bistro. Every time I make it, I plan my future as the owner and sole employee of a small cafe, where I serve a soup of the day, which is usually this (I think I'd sell a bowl for $4.5, and maybe a cup for $2.5), because none of my other soups are very trendy. Fortunately, this is a soup that bends as easily as your whim, so to speak. If you don't want to use collard greens, you can use broccoli. Or asparagus. Or kale. You could probably even use celery. Or carrots. Maybe even eggplant. Hmm, that would be interesting.

I have to give Robert credit for this soup, really, as it was originally mostly his idea.

Mostly.


COLLARD-POTATO SOUP

Olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 bunch (1/2 to 1 lb) collard greens, washed and stems separated
2 cups sliced yellow onion
4 medium red potatoes, sliced thinly (4 cups, maybe?)
2 fat cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
Water
1/2 cup heavy cream
Fresh chives for garnish

1. One thing I really like to do with making a pureed soup like this is to roast at least part of the star vegetable ahead of time. It adds a hint of a charred flavor to the soup, which I like. So the first thing you should do is preheat the oven to 375°F. Cut the collard stems into sticks a few inches long and toss them with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Spread them in the bottom of a glass baking dish, which you will then put in the oven when it's preheated. Keep it there for 30 minutes while you do the rest of the soup.

2. Start your pot. You'll need a relatively large pot - not because you're making a lot of soup, but because greens start out large and get small after they cook, and you need to give them space. I used a big honkin' stockpot. Anyway, the long and short of it is that you need to slice your onions - however you want is fine - and chuck them in the pot with a little olive oil over medium heat.



You should then slice your collard leaves. This might seem like a pain, but it doesn't have to be! I stack a bunch of them together, roll them tightly, cut them once hot-dog-style right down the middle of the roll, and then slice the roll the fat way in about 1/2-inch slices. So you get a bunch of leaf pieces. It should take less than a minute to do the whole bunch. Toss them with the onions.



3. Let the onions and collards cook for several minutes so the greens can reduce, but stir them a lot so the onions don't burn on the bottom of the pot. In the meantime, you can smash your garlic and slice your potatoes!! This is so exciting. To smash garlic, keep the skin on and whack it hard coming straight down with a mostly-full bottle of olive oil. Then cut off the ends, peel (quite easily, I might add), and roughly chop. It will be simmering in water for awhile, so you don't want it too fine lest the garlic flavor cook out.



Ooh, potatoes. So all you do is slice each potato in half the long way (so you get two elongated flattish halves) and then lay the flat side down and slice thinly from the end. It goes pretty fast. The thinner you slice, the less time it takes to cook. I would go anywhere from super-duper thin to maybe 3/16 of an inch. Or just eyeball it. Or use one of those mandolin slicers. But mind your fingertips if you do use one, as they may slice off and will subsequently get lost in the potatoes and then become rubbery with cooking and ruin the texture of the soup. At this point, your greens and onions should look something like this, and start to be leaving a residue on the bottom of the pot despite your efforts.



4. This means it's time to add water. Add potatoes, add garlic, a hefty pinch of sea salt, and add enough water to just cover everything. Probably more water than I did, because I had to add more later.



Turn the heat up a bit to bring it to a simmer, and then turn it back down to keep it simmering gently and cover the pot partially with a lid on cockeyed.

5. Let the pot cook like that for 15 minutes or so, stirring every few minutes to make sure everything's getting cooked evenly. If ever you notice a lot of things poking out of the water, either add more water or push them back under. Your roasting collard stems will probably be ready around this time, so take them out of the oven. They should have gotten some nice browned edges.



Take the most even-looking half of them and cut them into very short pieces and set aside to use as garnish. The rest of them you should cut into 1-inch segments and toss into the simmering water.

6. When the potatoes are tender (take a piece out and eat it and decide if they're cooked or not), then you're in the home stretch. Everything should have mellowed out together in the pot, like so.



Take it off the heat and whip out your immersion/wand blender (that's the hand blender on a stick which is so handy in situations such as these). If you don't have one, you can use a normal blender and do it in batches, but that's a pain. Or you can use a food mill, which is also a pain. A food processor probably works too, but I have never used one for this purpose, so I don't know. An immersion blender is a good tool to have around. Put it in your pot of soup and start whirring it around. In a few minutes it should look like a comic book swamp.



This is good. Taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as needed.

7. The final steps are thus. Add your cream, in a drizzle (why? I don't know. because it's fun.). I didn't measure how much I put in, but it was probably about half a cup. Blend it some more, until it gets evenly pale green. Taste again, adjust as necessary. If it's really thick, don't add more cream, add more water.

8. So now you can put it in a bowl. Add some of your chopped roasted collard stems. And some chives. And then eat it. OM NOM NOM this is a really awesome soup. I mean it, it's really good. You should try it.

So, if I were changing anything about this recipe, I'd make it more often. That is all. I mean, really - it's an organic soup that contains probably 8 servings for under $10 for the whole pot. Good. Deal.


I also want to dedicate this soup, and the blog post, and the recipe, to my late great uncle Bym. I always associated this particular shade of green with him, and I thought of him when I made it. And I think maybe he would have liked it.