Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and best of all I wasn’t responsible for this one.  (Thanks Ted.)  My wife and I hosted T-Day for our extended family for years and years, starting in college.  Starting way back then, I instituted a policy of multi-culturalizing our holiday feasts by picking a different culture every year for Thanksgiving and for Christmas dinner.  This resulted in (I thought) some pretty spectacular feasts.  I did Russian food one year, Scandinavian, a great Mexican Christmas dinner complete with stuffed chiles with walnut sauce…

And somewhere along the line various outlying members of the family started to rebel.  People would show up at my house for Thanksgiving dinners with turkey breasts and “request” that I cook them, since they “had to have” turkey at Thanksgiving.  I complied, but it pissed me off to no end, so at some point I just gave up and went back to traditional “Thanksgiving food”.  Which isn’t to say they haven’t been good.  A year or two back we compromised and I barbecued a couple of ducks instead of the turkey.  There are plenty of interesting things that you can do with “traditional” recipes, but sometimes I miss the variety.  The other advantage to non-traditional options is that it saved us from the traditional argument over whose grandmother’s stuffing we were going to make.  At least we don’t have to go through that anymore.   Naming our children was easier than choosing the stuffing. 

I’m considering doing something wacky for Christmas dinner this year.  We’ll see.  Medieval French?  Hmmmm. 

One of my very favorite soups has got to be caldo gallego, a Spanish soup (from Galicia, hence the name) which consists of sausage, potatoes, kale or other hearty greens, onions and white beans.  A similar soup appears in Portugal, where is is called (I believe) caldo verde.  I made some last night, and since my buddy Greg asked for the recipe at lunch today, I thought I'd go ahead and post it.

start with broth.  I use Pacific Food's "Natural" beef broth.  It has a great flavor, and no added junk.

throw in

• onions (chopped)
• kale or other greens: I like "lacinto" or "dinosaur" kale, which has thin very dark leaves.  I've also used oak leaf kale, regular curly kale, or collard greens to good effect.  I've seen some recipes that call for turnip greens, but I find them too bitter.
• sausage: the best bet is if you can get real Spanish chorizo (the hard kind, not the squishy Mexican kind you often see in markets here).  Since I don't have a regular source for those (although occasionally if I'm in Seattle I stop by the Spanish market at the top of the Pike St. hill climb) I use a hard smoked andouille that my New Seasons carries.  I've also used Polish or Keilbasa, but it's not as good.
• Potatoes: I actually have started substituting tofu instead, being opposed to simple carbs, but I've used white potatoes or yellow fingerlings (the absolute best if you eat taters). 
• white beans: navy beans are nice, or great northern.  I think I used great notherns from Westbrae Natural last night.

Bring to a boil and cook until the kale is softened up enough to eat.  Goes excellently with some extra tabasco dashed in at the table (if you like that kind of thing). 

Last night I tried out a pork roast after a style that my friend Lori showed me.  I used a medium sized, boneless pork shoulder roast, browned it in a cast iron dutch oven, then poured in some beer (Ommegang Belgian Abbey-style from Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY) salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, just a little cinnamon.  Popped it in the oven at 400°. 

After an hour I threw in an onion, and a Mutsu apple.  About an hour and a half after that I threw in a bunch of chantrelle mushrooms, and put it back in for another 45 min - 1 hour.  Total cooking time was about 4 hours.  It came out really well.  Served along with a lentil and rice pilaf, and some green salad.  Worked out very nicely. 

Thanks, Lori!