Squash and Kale Soup

So I had these cold-weather vegetables -- greens, squash -- and I was wondering what the heck I was going to do with them.  I'm really good at using up root vegetables, and I love when broccoli comes in.  But winter squash? Kale?  Not so much.

Of course cold weather is a good time to make soups.  And it's pretty easy to do soups on a "saute onion/add stock/add vegetable/cook/maybe puree or add cream" model.  But I guess I was kind of bored with that, and wanted something with a little more vegetable integrity. 

So....  I totally winged this.  It came out really freaking good.  I was very pleased.  But I still have leftovers.  I wish I could have shared more of it. 

I hope I remember this well enough.  :)

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• bacon grease (or moral equivalent)
• 1 butternut squash
• ½ pound kale, more or less
• 4 cups or so stock, broth, vegetable cooking water, or just water
• ¾ cup or so white wine
• piece o' ham hock
• leftover ham, or sausage, or other already-cooked proteinaceous deliciousness, or other leftovers as you deem appropriate (I threw in maybe ¾ cup leftover yellow rice)
• salt, pepper, thyme, or other favorite spices

Procedure:

• Wash and stem kale, and roughly chop.  Peel and finely dice an onion.  Peel and seed a butternut squash; dice it into ½-inch dice. 
• Get a big heavy pot, maybe 3 or 4 quarts or more in volume.  Put a couple tablespoons of your fat or oil in, and heat it up.  
• Take the piece of ham hock (mine was an oval about an inch thick, 1½ to 2 inches wide, and 3 or 4 inches long), and lightly brown whatever sides you can easily do.  Remove and set aside.
• Saute the onion in the hot fat for a few minutes.
• Add the chopped kale to the onion and fat.  Add some spices.  I used 10 or 15  grinds of white pepper and maybe ¼ teaspoon of dried thyme; "Italian Seasoning" would also work here.  Also add a sprinkling of salt, but if you're using canned stock, be wary here.  Stir and mix the kale around until it's shrunk in volume by about half.  The salt will help it wilt.  I also threw in about 1/4 cup of white wine here and put the lid on the pot for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.  When the kale/onion/spice mixture is reduced to a manageable volume and is still a brighter, attractive green than when it went in, remove it from the pot and set it aside.  You can put it with the hock. 
• If the fat is all gone, add some more.  Add some of your diced squash.  If you can get it all into the pot in a single layer, go for it and add it all.  If not, do this in stages, taking partially cooked squash out, then cooking more until you've browned it all off a little.  Add fat along if you need to. 
• When all the squash cubes are partially cooked and maybe browned a little on some surfaces, add your stock/water/what have you.  Also add the rest of your wine -- maybe ½ cup or so at this point.  Add back all your cooked vegetables. Heat to a simmer. 
• Taste.  Re-season, adding more spices, pepper, or salt as you think necessary.  If you've used canned stock, you likely won't want more salt.  If you're using water, you probably will.  If you think you're going to want more fluid in the soup, add some.  If you want it more like a vegetable stew, don't.  
• Start checking your vegetables for consistency, seeing if they're cooked enough for you.  When they get close to done, add any chopped pieces of cooked meat you feel like adding.  I had a slice of leftover ham I chopped and put in.  I also added some leftover yellow rice because I liked the color; that also added some starch.  But you don't have to do that.  :)  In fact, you can do this whole dish in a vegetarian manner; just make sure you've got plenty of flavor from elsewhere. 
• Serve it forth.  I am almost incapable of eating anything soupy or stewy without crackers.  Cornbread would also be wonderful here, and awfully close to traditional as an accompaniment.

Notes:

• I'm tagging this as an experiment, because I made it up as I went along.  Caveat diner. 
• The squash cooked much more quickly than I thought it would.  In fact the whole thing went pretty quickly.  I think I went from raw veggies in fridge to eating it in less than an hour. But the squash flavor is not very pronounced. 
• I'm a fan of re-seasoning while I'm cooking.  I think it works well with the idea of building layers of flavor, and also helps you figure out how something is progressing.  But it helps to know what happens to your spices while they cook:  Something like basil is best added very late in the process, as its flavor will disappear quickly.  If black pepper is ground in late, the piney notes it adds will stay there, but the heat it adds will stay even if you add it at the beginning.  Something like dried thyme seems to work fine with long cooking.   Some spices seem to benefit from cooking, even if they lose in pungency.  For instance, I now fry my chili spices at the beginning of making chili.  They're less intense, but I like the flavor better, so I compensate by starting with more.

Comments

[Maura]

Sounds excellent, Joe - a good clean out the refrigerator recipe (which most soups are, in my opinion).

I have some turkey stock in the freezer, but I've mostly been making vegetable stock lately. It's cheap, fast and easy. I was surprised that it doesn't add an overpowering veggie taste.

proteinaceous

This is my favorite new word.

[John]

Personal pet peeve, Joe:

Its Bacon Fat.

Grease is something you find under the hood of your car.

Fat is something you cook with.

I see you only used it the one time, but still...

[Joe Eater]

Maura - My mom was an expert at what I used to call refrigerator soup, which she made by cleaning out leftovers, and to which she might add something like a can of tomatoes. It always looked like hell, but it tasted good. / Unfortunately the yellow rice lost its yellowness and didn't stand out so much in the soup, but it was a good idea.

John - I understand, but my parents always called the stuff bacon grease, so that's pretty much stuck in my head. The metal container they used for saving it had a built-in strainer, and said "grease" on the outside. I think I'd use the word "fat" for any uncooked fat I cut off a hunk of bacon, and the word "grease" for the drippings, but I'm not going to fight anyone over it. :) Come to think of it, drippings might be a good compromise term.

[Lisa Creech Bledsoe]

Awesome! I enjoyed reading this so much I posted it to 30Threads. Thanks for the pleasure of a great recipe.

http://www.30threads.com/2008/12/19/warm-and-happy/

[Joe Eater]

Hey, thanks! Did you try making it? Since I winged it, it's not like the recipe had a lot of testing. :)

[Jim]

Sorry, "drippings" is already taken in my house! Drippings are the juices that have run out of that hamburger or other meat that have gelled into a tasty little mass that you scrape off of the bottom of the frying pan and try to consume before the rest of the family comes looking for some!

[Joe Eater]

Argh. :) Well, if that stuff solidifies on the pan bottom, it's called fond. But I guess the word "drippings" works too before the stuff stops being liquid.