Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Potaje de Acelgas: Swiss Chard Pottage
In today's photo of the day, I mentioned that a local speciality is the cabbage soup, or pottage - Potaje de Col - for the simple reason that the fertile area grows cabbages like weeds.
Whilst I have eaten cabbage soup locally, in a restaurant, I don't have an exact recipe for it, though what I was served was otherwise exactly the same as this, Potaje de Acelgas. (Translated from Cocina Canaria - Vicente Sanchez Araña (Everest)).
The restaurant: well, yes, I can tell you, it was El Rubio, on the coast of Los Silos in La Caleta de Interian. However, as with a lot of small, country restaurants here, you cannot guarantee to get the same menu choices on every visit.
In fact, I don't think I have ever had the same soup twice there. They just make one large cauldron and, if you want soup, you get what you are given. It is always nice and, whilst there may not be a choice, you do know that the chef chose whatever were the freshest and best ingredients in the market that day.
To get back to the recipe, fairly obviously, to make cabbage soup, you would simply replace the Swiss Chard in the recipe with cabbage. The one pictured above, is vegetarian (meatless) and was made with bought cabbage, rather than our "field" cabbage, which tends to be a bit slow to cook and fast to act on the stomach! :)
Ingredients:
300 grams of garbanzo beans (chick peas in English)
4 litres of water
300 grams of pork ribs
1/2 a cup of olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped, seeds removed
1 teaspoon of sweet paprika
1 kilo of potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
1 kilo of pumpkin, peeled, whole
3/4 kilo of Swiss Chard, chopped
1 teaspoon powdered cumin
Salt
Method:
The garbanzo beans (chick peas) need to be put into soak the night before, then wash and reserve. Put the four liters of water into a saucepan, place on the heat and when it comes to the boil, put in the garbanzos (chick peas) and the pork ribs.
Separately, fry the onion, garlic, tomato and paprika in the olive oil. When softened and reduced, add this mixture to the saucepan with the garbanzos (chick peas).
Once the garbanzos (chick peas) are cooked, add the potatoes, pumpkin and the Swiss Card. Leave to cook over a slow flame. When the potatoes are cooked, take out the pumpkin and mash it, returning it to the saucepan. Finally add the cumin and cook for just a few minutes more. Leave to rest for 10 minutes before serving.
