This kale soup is so simple, so delicious, so nutritious and so inexpensive that it would be just wrong not to share it!
This recipe comes from the Aunt of this guy; my “Cooking Buddy”.
The family comes from Albania and learning about a new cuisine has broadened my own cooking repetoire, especially when it comes to vegetables.
I have gained a new perspective on preparing and serving food and learned how to create complete meals from very simple ingredients.
The ingredients for this soup are: Kale, potato, onion, garlic and celery, olive oil and yogurt . With salt and pepper to taste.
We garnished with sheep milk feta cheese and fresh green onion.
A hearty wheat bread truly rounds out this meal.
I will make this a part of my regular rotation of dishes around here, to be sure.
And I would like to experiment with vegetable stock, which we didn’t use.
I had my doubts about the lack of broth but I was pleasantly surprised by how flavorful the soup was without the added boullion.
And considering that most boullions contain MSG, sugar, sodium and other unnatural and unneccesary processed ingredients, it is nice to know that I don’t need to have homemade stock handy or run out to pick up something at the store when I want to make this soup.
The other thing that I like about this soup is that the olive oil and yogurt are added at the end of cooking.
From a nutrition perspective this helps to maintain the health benefits and maximum flavor of the yogurt and the olive oil.
Method
The process begins by boiling 1 large yellow onion and about 5-6 cloves of garlic.
We’re garlic lovers around here so I tend to use twice what I recommend at times!
I had 2 large baking potatoes which I chopped and added to the boil.
I then cleaned and chopped 2 large heads of kale and added them to the boil. Curly Kale worked well but I would have preferred Lacinto Kale.
I then chopped 4-5 large celery stalks and added these to the boil, as well.
I cooked this mixture until everything became soft and wilted.
Now, I was supposed to drain the water and pour the veggies into the food processor but I didn’t know that, so I just pureed everything together.
The cooking water was included and amounted to about 2-3 cups.
I put the pureed mixture into a large pot and continued to cook at medium heat for about 15 minutes.
We then added about 1 cup of olive oil and about 1 to 2 cups of yogurt.
We served this with some crumbled sheep milk feta and freshly cut green onion.
Salt and pepper to taste.
