Anna Thomas' Great Green Soup
If you cook often, you have had this experience: the dish that keeps reinventing itself. I’ve made this green soup with yams instead of potatoes. I made it with all spinach and nutmeg. A friend brought me fresh watercress from her stream, and I put it together with Yukon gold potatoes — excellent.
Once I found I had no potatoes, and my eye fell upon a kabocha squash. Another time I’d been roasting beets and had all the fresh, shiny tops left, so by chance I came up with one of my favorites, beet green soup.
Usually I pureed the soup, blending the flavors into one pungent, savory essence of green, but sometimes I left the individual elements intact-pieces of squash gradually softening and thickening the broth, flecks of browned onion and always the strips of dark green. Sometimes I garnished the soup with cheese or croutons or even a spicy salsa, and sometimes I ate it in perfect simplicity.
It’s not so much a recipe now as a way of life. The method is always the same, and the basic formula is this:
First: lots of greens, the nicest greens you can find, dark green, glossy, firm. No tired old greens auditioning for the compost heap. Two or three big bunches of greens are not too much for a really green soup.
Next: something to give it a little body. This could be a potato, a yam, those delicious mushrooms or some winter squash.
And then: always some onions for sweetness, slowly caramelized in oil until they are an amber-colored marmalade, and some lemon juice or vinegar for acidity.
Finally: vegetable broth (or chicken broth). Season the soup with salt and pepper, maybe cayenne. Basta. That’s it. Except for all the things you change to make it different and your own, but you know about that already.
Blend It, Don’t End It When you puree the soups, it’s easiest to use a hand-held blender in the pot, rather than transfer the hot soup to a blender. If you do use a blender, puree the soup in small batches.
This recipe was first published with the story “My Green Soup and How It Grew” by Anna Thomas on March 14, 2001.
Green soup
Wash the greens thoroughly, then cut the chard and kale off their stems and slice the leaves. Combine the chard, kale, green onions and cilantro in a soup pot with the water and 1 teaspoon of salt. Peel the potato, or just scrub it well if you prefer, cut it into big pieces and add it to the pot. Bring the water to a boil, reduce the heat and let it simmer for about half an hour.
Meanwhile, heat 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and a sprinkle of salt and cook them over low heat until they are golden brown and soft. This will take up to 45 minutes; don’t hurry, you only need to give them a stir once in a while, and it’s the slow cooking that develops the sweetness. If you like, you can deglaze the pan at the end with 2 tablespoons of Marsala or Sherry. Increase the heat to medium, remove the skillet from the stove, and add the Marsala. Return it to the stove and cook the onions, stirring, 1 minute. Add the onions to the soup.
Put another teaspoon of oil in the skillet and cook the garlic over low heat, stirring, until it sizzles and smells great, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the garlic to the soup pot and simmer everything for a few minutes more.
At this point there won’t be much liquid in the soup, so add enough broth-about 3 cups-to make the soup a soup. Coarsely puree the soup but don’t over-process it. Anything with potatoes in it can get slimy if you work it too much.
Return the soup to the pot, bring it back to a simmer and taste. Add salt as needed, grind in a little black pepper, add the cayenne and the lemon juice. Stir well and taste again. Now you’re on your own-correct the seasoning and serve big steaming bowls of green soup.
Get our Cooking newsletter.
Your roundup of inspiring recipes and kitchen tricks.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
