Boiled-down greens might sound drab for dinner, possessing all the charm of a bowl of kelp. But, as you know if you've ever tasted slow-cooked collards, stewing down stiff greens may wash out their structure and color, but it leaves behind something soft yet substantial — earthy, haunting and sweet.
What you might not realize is that it doesn't take hours to get that kind of character from your greens — you can get it in about 30 minutes, if you cook them like Anna Thomas, filmmaker and author of the classic "Vegetarian Epicure" books. She dedicated a full two chapters of "Love Soup," her most recent book, to green soups — one chapter for winter, one for warmer weather variations. When I wrote to her earlier this week, she already had a batch in her fridge.
This recipe is one of the wintry types, a rich, vegan purée that doesn’t rely on any of the typical tricks for implying meatiness, like liquid smoke or nutritional yeast. The greens are enough.
To get there, you’ll cook down a very full pot of greens, herbs, and one potato in just 3 cups of water, steaming that big pile down into a denser one, and concentrating the liquid into an intense green stock.
At the same time, you'll caramelize onions in another pan, dump those into the pot. Sizzle a garlic clove and dump that in, too. Splash in some sherry if you like. By splitting the action between two pans, your cooking time is cut in half — all of this is done in half an hour, but tastes like collards that have cooked all day.
Only then do you add just enough extra broth “to make the soup a soup” that will pour from a ladle, and blend it all together. Then you shine up the flavor with lemon juice and cayenne, and serve with an essential finishing swoop of olive oil.
This is an excellent recipe, but also a template. You could use any greens, and any herbs. Instead of the potato, Thomas has bolstered the broth with arborio rice, yams, sautéed mushrooms or squash. The caramelized onions are key for filling out the flavor of the soup, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use shallots or leeks instead.
Thomas first wrote about her happy experiments with green soup in the Los Angeles Times in 2001 and the recipe took on a cult following. "Love Soup" won a James Beard Award, then a spinoff article on green soups for Eating Well magazine won another. When Roger Ebert wrote "The Pot and How to Use It," Thomas found herself developing a rice cooker version for him. As Thomas told me, "Though it began as a turn to healthier eating after the holidays, it soon became a year-round favorite for all the right reasons — it's just … delicious!"
It’s good for dinner parties, for brown bag lunches, and for dinners alone with a fridge of greens you don’t know what to do with. Thomas has also used the soup to comfort very sick friends: “More than one has told me that it was the only thing they wanted when all appetite faded, and that it brought them back to life a bit,” she said. “If it never did another thing in its soupy career, that would be enough.”
Anna Thomas’ Green Soup
From "Love Soup" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)
Serves 4 to 6
1 bunch chard or spinach
1 bunch kale
4 to 5 green onions, sliced, white and green parts
1/2 cup loosely packed cilantro
1 tsp. sea salt, plus more to taste
1 medium Yukon Gold potato
1 medium yellow onion
1 1/2 Tbsp. olive oil
Marsala or dry sherry (optional)
1 to 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 1/2 to 3 cups vegetable broth
Freshly ground black pepper
Cayenne
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
Wash the greens thoroughly, trim off their stems, and slice the leaves. Combine the chard or spinach, kale, green onions and cilantro in a large soup pot with 3 cups water and a teaspoon of salt. Peel the potato (or just scrub it well if you prefer), cut it into small pieces, and add it to the pot. Bring the water a boil, turn down the flame to low, cover the pot, and let the soup simmer for about half an hour.
Meanwhile, chop the onion, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet, and cook the onion with a small sprinkle of salt over medium flame until it is golden brown and soft. This will take up to half an hour. Don’t hurry; give it a stir once in a while, and let the slow cooking develop the onion’s sweetness. If you like, you can deglaze the pan at the end with a bit of Marsala or sherry — not required, but a nice touch.
Add the caramelized onion to the soup. Put the remaining 1/2 tablespoon oil in the pan and stir the chopped garlic in it for just a couple of minutes, until it sizzles and smells great. Add the garlic to the pot and simmer the soup for 10 minutes more.
Add enough of the broth to make the soup a soup — it should pour easily from the ladle — and purée it in the blender in batches or with an immersion blender. Don’t overprocess; potatoes can turn gummy it you work them too much.
Return the soup to the pot, bring it back to a simmer, and taste. Add a pitch more salt if needed, grind in a little black pepper, and add a pinch of cayenne and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Stir well and taste again. Now use your taste buds: Correct the seasoning to your taste with a drop more lemon juice or another pinch of salt, then serve big steaming bowls of green soup.
Garnish with a thin drizzle of fruity olive oil.
This article originally appeared on Food52.com: http://food52.com/blog/11492-anna-thomas-green-soup
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