Caldo verde won the soup category of the Seven Wonders of Portuguese Gastronomy on 10 September 2011, at a gala held in the old Cavalry School in Santarém. Four ingredients, one technique and an argument about how thinly to cut the cabbage that never ends.
10 September 2011
Voting ran from 7 May to 7 September 2011 and was audited by PwC. It started with 70 dishes and narrowed to 21 finalists, three in each of the seven categories.
Caldo verde won the soup category, entered under the Entre Douro e Minho region. The election gathered 899,069 votes.
It won alongside alheira de Mirandela and Serra da Estrela cheese in starters, arroz de marisco in shellfish, grilled sardines in fish, leitão da Bairrada in meat and pastel de Belém in desserts.
The cabbage has a scientific name
The cabbage in caldo verde is couve-galega, Brassica oleracea var. acephala. Acephala means headless. Unlike white cabbage, this one never closes into a ball.
The plant climbs to around two metres on a tall bare stalk. Leaves are picked one by one from the bottom upwards as they open, and a single plant gives leaves almost all year. The flowering shoots, the grelos, come in February and March.
It changes name from place to place: horto, couve-ratinha, couve alta in the Serra do Caramulo, verza on the Galician side of the border.
The cut
The central rib comes out. It is tough and it will not cook in the same time as the rest of the leaf.
The leaves are stacked, the bundle is rolled like a cigar and sliced across the roll into the finest possible julienne. Portuguese has its own verb for this: ripar. In supermarkets the bag is sold under that name, couve ripada para caldo verde.
The argument over thickness does not end. Some insist on threads under a millimetre, which almost dissolve into the broth, and others cut wider so the cabbage is felt in every spoonful. The cut decides the time on the heat, and the time on the heat decides the colour. The finer the thread, the fewer the minutes, the greener the soup.
The potato does the work of flour
There is no flour in it, no cream, no thickener. The body comes entirely from the potato.
Floury potatoes are used, higher in starch, which break down as they cook. They are boiled with onion and garlic, pushed through to a purée and returned to their own cooking water. A food mill leaves the broth rustic. A stick blender leaves it smooth and paler.
The cabbage goes in last, into broth already boiling, and stays a few minutes. Overcooked it darkens, loses the green and takes on the smell of boiled cabbage. That is the common mistake and there is no undoing it.
None of these ingredients is old
The potato is American and reached the country late. There is a record of cultivation at Quiaios in 1643 and potato purchases by the Viseu seminary from 1705, with entries running to 1786. In the 1720s come the first references to growing it in Trás-os-Montes.
In 1797 Teresa Luísa de Jesus Sousa Maciel introduced the crop at São Romão de Vilarinho and was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon. In 1799 Diogo Inácio Pina Manique handed out potatoes in the Ribatejo. Only by the middle of the nineteenth century was the potato ordinary food in poor northern households.
Maize tells the same story. Rui Fernandes describes milho marroco near Lamego in 1531 and 1532. A rent roll of the bishopric of Porto from 1542 draws the first express distinction between milho meudo and milho groso. Father António Gomes writes of milho maroco between the Douro and the Minho in 1648, and Manuel Severim de Faria calls it ordinary provision in the Beira and the Minho in 1655.
Before that, broa was made of millet and rye. The maize broa broken beside the bowl has been in the north-west for less than four centuries.
The chouriço, the olive oil and the bowl
The chouriço is cut into slices two to three millimetres thick and either browned first or cooked in the broth. One or two slices go into each bowl. Some houses prefer paio or linguiça.
The olive oil goes in raw, over the top, once the soup is already served. Heated, it loses its aroma and counts only as fat.
The bowl is earthenware, and the clay holds the heat while you eat. It is served scalding.
The June nights
Santo António falls on 13 June and the festivities are held the night before, from the 12th into the 13th. São João falls on the 24th and the night is that of the 23rd. São Pedro is the 29th.
At São João in Porto the caldo verde comes after the grilled sardines, the pork steaks, the peppers and the bread, before the streets fill for the fireworks. It arrives near midnight and it is the part of the night that carries the rest.
In Galicia, across the river Minho, the same idea takes white beans and turnip greens and is called caldo galego.
Fado ao Carmo has two fado houses in Lisbon, in Chiado and in Alfama, serving Portuguese cooking with different menus in each. Tables can be booked here.