11. A surprising lack of sausage jokes
recipe: caldo verde (portuguese potato & greens soup with sausage). also, some discussion about my grandma. also, holiday cookies.
This week’s soup is inspired by my grandma, also known as Nance, and I am super stoked to see her next week for the holidays. Her father was from Portugal, and she told me that she ate a lot of this soup growing up. But since she moved away from her family to get married and start the long, arduous process that would eventually produce the adorable person who’s writing the very words you’re reading now, she hasn’t been able to source linguiça in the mountains of West Virginia. Real shocker, I know.
Before you say, “Ashley, I’m sure she could find linguiça on the internet, why does Nance not simply get a package overnighted to her home so she can make this soup?” I need to point out that in 2004, someone bought her a set of Bath and Body Works lotion and body wash as a holiday gift and to this day, 17 years later, it sits unopened in her bathroom not because she doesn’t like the smell, but because she’s saving it for a special occasion. My grandmother would NEVER pay money to ship something like sausage. It would be unheard of. Nance is the type of person who will wait until she has enough items in a shopping cart to hit the ship free minimum.
My grandma had a pretty big stroke a couple of years ago that took away all function on her left side, and has been in an assisted living home since. It was hard for my family to watch my very independent and vibrant grandmother become very dependent and lackluster essentially overnight, but I think all of us have moved into the acceptance phase at this point. Having a person you love be stuck in a nursing home during a pandemic, though, that was killer. Even though the facility was under lockdown for much of 2020, my mom and I were constantly on edge that someone would bring in COVID-19 and end up killing Nance.
Sidenote: It’s weird to contemplate all of the tiny ways that the pandemic has affected us. Wearing masks, scheduling boosters, doomscrolling news articles, limiting the amount of time I get to spend in Target — these are all of the big pandemic-related things that take up a lot of my brain energy. But there are dozens more little pandemic microaggressions that we just don’t consider because they’re buried under the surface. I think we’re all going to need about 6 straight months of group therapy to work out our collective trauma. I would tell the Democrats to run on that in 2024, but we see how the student loan forgiveness promises went so I’m not optimistic haha.
Anyway, the end. Make this soup — I didn’t have high hopes for it because it was a little basic, but it turned out to be really good. I put one container of it in the freezer so I can bring some to Nance next week and give her a little taste of her childhood, assuming I didn’t mess any of the ingredients up. Fingers crossed she likes it, but if not, I hope you do!
(If you are having trouble sourcing linguiça, consider replacing it with andouille sausage, chorizo, or even a spicy smoked sausage in a pinch. Also, I know you might be thinking that having TWO different kinds of potatoes in this soup is annoying, and man, I feel you. But the russet is necessary because the starch helps thicken the soup, so suck it up and buy a 99 cent russet potato.)
Caldo Verde
Adapted from this Serious Eats recipe
Gluten-free | Dairy-free depending on what’s in your sausage | 4-6 servings depending on hunger level
Ingredients
- 2-3 tbsp of olive oil
- 10-12 oz of linguiça, cut into 1/4 - 1/2 inch slices
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 6 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
- 1 large russet potato, peeled and medium diced
- 2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and medium diced
- 6 cups of chicken broth or stock
- 1 bunch of basic kale, lacinato kale or collard greens, stems removed, chopped finely
- Salt, pepper, you know how it goes
Directions
Heat olive oil in your soup pot until hot. Assuming your sausage is precooked, saute linguiça to render some fat and get some color and crispy bits around the edges. If your sausage is raw, cook until cooked-through. Remove linguiça from the pot and set aside.
Saute onion for about 5 minutes, season with salt/pepper, then add garlic and saute for another couple of minutes. Add potatoes and broth, making sure to scrape up any crusty bits from the bottom of the pot. Add kale, then cook on a simmer for about 25-30 minutes. The russet potatoes should be pretty mushy by now - I like to agitate them a little to get more starch/thickening agents.
Put your sausage back in to warm through, then serve. I did some research and it looks as though this is traditionally served with 1-3 slices of sausage in each bowl. I had a lot of sausage so I did a little more. Honestly, just measure your sausage with your heart.
Ratings
Right out of the pot
👵 👵 👵 👵 / 👵 👵 👵 👵 👵
I did not have a ton of high hopes for this soup because I thought it was gonna be meh but honestly, it was surprisingly good. I don’t eat linguiça (or sausage) very often, so it was a bit of a treat. It’s a pretty basic soup — there aren’t really any spices or anything in it — but for some reason, it made me feel better? Like I ate it and I felt warm and comforted, and that lasted for a solid hour or two after. Was I a Portuguese peasant in one of my past lives? A very respectable four out of five Nances.
Leftovers
👵 👵 👵 👵 👵 / 👵 👵 👵 👵 👵
This is definitely one of those soups that gets better with a little sittin’ time. The sausage flavor kind of permeates into the broth base and the potatoes get even creamier. I’m bumping it up to an unprecedented five out of five Nances.
Depression meal
👵 👵 👵 👵 / 👵 👵 👵 👵 👵
I did a lot of shortcuts with this recipe — I used pre-peeled garlic (sorry not sorry, I can buy a giant tub of it for $3 at H-Mart) and a bag of shredded kale I picked up from Target. It’s one pot total, and other than some potato peeling/chopping, it’s pretty hands off. But the real reason this is getting four out of five grandmas is the weirdly soothing qualities this soup has. Psychosomatic or not, maybe this will make you temporarily feel like the world isn’t a ball of garbage hurtling through space.
Apparently, the Portuguese tradition is to eat this soup as the first meal after midnight on New Year’s Eve — perhaps the brothy greens helps any overindulgence from earlier in the night go down a little easier? Or maybe, like black-eyed peas, it’s considered good luck? Regardless, I might go stick an extra container in my freezer for me to eat on the 31st. I could use a little more good luck in 2022, who couldn’t?
I’m spending this last weekend before the holidays baking up a storm. My holiday cookie boxes will contain:
Homemade fudge rounds
Marbled shortbread (which I have already messed up because SOMEONE [it’s me] did not read the directions in full before starting the marbling process. But honestly, who cares, right?)
Coffee fudge
My friend Linda gave me her holiday cookie box that included the BEST praline bars. I would love to tell you that my housemate and I savored the box but tbh, we ended up eating it for dinner one night like the terrible sugar goblins we are.
I’ll be taking next week off for the holidays, so you won’t see another issue of Soup Club until December 31. If you’re celebrating Christmas, I’m sending you my very best wishes from our current dystopian hellscape.