autumn | Little Button Diaries

We’re really excited about our guest post from Brighton blogger Spade Fork Spoon this month. Simon has been our blogging inspiration and taught us everything we know about blogs a few years ago. Spade Fork Spoon is his new blog with tales from his allotment and into his kitchen. Without further ado here he is…

Season of soups and mellow fruitfulness

I was really pleased to be asked to do a guest post on The Little Button Diaries. I often look on the blog at the great baking and up-cycling ideas and try to see how they may be used at the allotment or in my own kitchen. With the the end of September approaching perhaps I’ll have more time inside to try out some baking too.

Without doubt Autumn, with its gentle warmth and changing colours, is my favourite season. It is a golden season, a season of anticipation and excitement. There is a rosy hue to the light and often a nip in the air. For me it is the season to look back to the summer; but mainly to look forward to wearing hats and scarves, kicking through golden leaves, and soup. I love soup! I love the idea of creating a comforting day out of simple ingredients. Soup can of course be spicy or fresh, but I think it should always have a reassuring quality – like a liquid blanket to wrap around you.

With soup’s inherent frugality in mind I recently made some Caldo Verde using crops from the plot. Caldo Verde is a Portuguese soup which, at its simplest and most frugal, is made using kale, potatoes and water. The inclusion of chorizo and the use of a good chicken stock add a warmth and depth of flavour which compliments the earthy kale. It is a soup which simultaneously refreshes and comforts, and. I doubt is the first of many soups this autumn.

What you will need

A tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
4 or 5 potatoes (I used Charlotte – you want the potato to hold its shape, only crumbling slightly from the cooking)
1 litre of good chicken stock
A couple of handfuls of Cavalo Nero (or any other cabbage)
80g Chorizo

Finely chop the onion and garlic and fry in the oil for a couple of minutes until soft. Cut the potatoes into rough two centimetre dice and add to onions. Cook for two minutes; add the litre of stock and simmer for twenty minutes, by which time the potatoes should be cooked through and starting the break up a little.

Meanwhile, cut the chorizo into small chunks and fry in some of the oil, until the spicy and salty orange fat runs out of the sausage. Remove the fried chorizo from the pan and add to the soup. Finely shred the Cavalo Nero and simmer in the soup for a couple of minutes.