Savoy Cabbage and White Bean Soup

I’m forever trying to be good and cook ahead so I have nice stuff to bring to work for lunch.  While I’m dropping a shedload of pounds of the money sort a week on posh sandwiches in Pret A Manger, I’m simultaneously gaining back a few more pounds of the making-my-ass-bigger sort (have you seen how many calories are in the posh cheddar and pickle baguette?  Who invented this beast? Are they MENTAL?).  Meanwhile, I’m buying leafy vegetables for dinner and letting them wilt in the fridge.  This craziness Must. Stop.

I absolutely love savoy cabbage.  It’s crinkly, it’s crunchy, it doesn’t turn to mush when it’s cooked, and it doesn’t smell like a nursing home.  I usually have it steamed then lightly stir-fried with a bit of garlic.  Neil likes to make it with lots of butter, cream and bacon, which is divine, but I am painfully aware that the clock is ticking towards the day where I adopt that refrigerator-shaped physique so prevalent amongst Mediterranean women in their twilight years (at least in my family).  It’s still a way off for me yet, but I’m not tempting fate.

Thus, healthy, hearty, anti-oxidant packed Savoy Cabbage and White Bean Soup.  This is extremely quick and easy to do.  It will take you half an hour tops. The beans make it extremely filling, but you could make it even more so with a bit of fresh bread on the side.  I’d say you’ll get enough for 4 single servings out of this, 2 very hungry people, or dinner and 2 packed lunches.

Here is my artfully arranged cast of characters:

Smoked Bacon, Celery, Savoy Cabbage, Cannellini Beans, Pork Stock, Leeks, Garlic. Camera shy: Romano Cheese.

Savoy Cabbage and White Bean Soup

Ingredients:

• 1/2 a head of savoy cabbage, sliced / shredded / whatever
• 3 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 2 ribs of celery, chopped
• 2 leeks, sliced (a medium sliced onion or a cup of chopped shallots would likely be a fine substitute)
• 2 pints of pork, chicken or vegetable stock
• 3 rashers of bacon (I used smoked), sliced up into bits
• 1 can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (butter beans would be a great substitute)
• 1/4 cup Romano or Parmesan cheese, for serving
• a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, for serving
• salt and pepper

Fry the bacon in a tiny bit of vegetable oil until the fat renders and the bacon starts to brown a bit.  Throw in the rest of the veg apart from the cabbage.  Cook a bit until they soften – about 5-10 minutes (former if you have an awesome gas stove, latter if you have a rubbish electric one like me).

Pour in the stock, chuck in the drained beans, season with some pepper, and bring to a boil.  Turn it down to a simmer and let bubble for about 20-25 minutes.

Quick note about seasoning: If you’re using stock from a cube, I would say to hold off on adding any salt during cooking. I didn’t add any at all – and I like my salt.  The bacon and cheese provided more than enough saltiness.

After about 20 minutes, add the cabbage, and let it simmer for 5 minutes until cooked. You could also add some fresh herbs at this stage, such as thyme, finely minced rosemary, or parsley.  I would have done this, but I forgot.

Turn the heat off.  Very carefully crush about 2/3 of the beans with a potato ricer or if you’re very brave, give it a quick squizz with a stick blender (be VERY careful of splashbacks if you use a stick blender – hot soup and your face is not a good combo!).  I used a stick blender, but I may just stick to a potato ricer next time as I like my soups on the chunky side.

Stir in a few tablespoons of cheese.  Ladle into bowls, grate over some more cheese, drizzle over a little extra virgin, a bit more pepper, and serve.

Ta-da:

Fettuccine with Cavolo Nero Pesto

Of all the activities likely to send me into a spiral of heart-searching, guilt and self-loathing, grocery shopping ranks near the top.  Take milk, for example.  We’re constantly running out of it at work, and at some point during the day, one of the staff will take it upon themselves to run out and buy a pint with their own money.  Sure, it’s only about 45p, but as a responsible and (I hope) fair employer, I think that should be a business expense, so I decided to research getting milk delivered to the office.  There is one company that seems to service all of the businesses in the area, but after hearing all of the alarming stories about how dairy farmers are being driven into the ground by big companies forcing their prices down to the point where they’re losing almost 19p a litre or something, I decided that I was going to buy from someone who paid dairy farmers a fair price.  After about two hours’ research, I had a list of about 10 companies who would deliver milk to our door, but absolutely no idea how to tell who was screwing the farmers and who wasn’t.  In the end the dire need for a cup of tea and convenience won, and someone just went to the crappy corner shop and bought some more surely-screwing-the-farmers milk.  (I will persevere in my quest for fair milk though.)

It’s the same thing with my veg box delivery.  I’d like to say it’s completely, utterly and totally about me supporting local farming and doesn’t factor in AT ALL the fact that our food shopping choices within walking distance are limited to The Corner Shop and The Other Corner Shop.  (Give me convenience, or give me death, as Jello Biafra say.)  There is also this sort of creeping embarrassment when I mention it to my friends – I feel kind of all like “Yusss, of course my eggs are natural, darling, they’ve still got bits of shit and feathers stuck to them!” – so I wind up in this spiral of bigging up my laziness when really I’m not all that lazy.  If I were, then I’d be on a first-name basis with all the pizza delivery places in this area (we’ll just ignore the fact that the proprietors of at least three of the Vietnamese restaurants in my last neighborhood used to wave at me when I walked by). And even though my carrots are twice the price, I’ve probably wound up saving money because instead of thinking “Oh, I must pick up some carrots at Sainsbury’s” and then coming home having bought carrots along with 2 bottles of wine, some random flavors of yogurt, plug-in air fresheners, miracle stain removers and whatever other crap they have on sale, I just skip the store, go home and try to find something interesting to do with the carrots I already had in the first place.  That I haven’t shafted any more farmers or raped our environment in the process ups the feel-good factor.

Thus, Cavolo Nero Pesto.  This is one of many reasons that the veg box is awesome.  They send you stuff that is in season, and since England has weird weather patterns, vegetables that you’d normally expect to see in other parts of the world grow well at random times of the year here.  Bok choy, for example, seems to grow like weeds here.  We get our veg box from Abel and Cole, and although you can dictate what you want in your box through a system of dislikes and favorites, I like being surprised with random stuff that I’d never think to buy, like salsify and Cavolo Nero.