There are not many apples left in the trees in Wessel’s orchard in Westbeemster. Storm Poly has blown all the young apples off the tree, so Pieter has to come up with something else and has seen kale. Stephan tries to catch shrimp while wading through the sea, but that doesn’t work either. Fortunately, there is always a plan B.
Pieter Kok walks with Wessel Keuper through his orchard in Westbeemster to see that there are almost no apples on the dozens of standard trees there. “Normally it would have been full of apples here,” says Wessel, somewhat disappointed. “Gold trains, Rode van Boskoop, tasty Coxes and the delicious Schellinkhouters! But that terrible storm in July blew them all into the IJsselmeer!”
Fortunately, there is beautiful kale in Wessel’s garden and Pieter loves it.
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Meanwhile, Stephan is barely holding on in the waves at Wijk aan Zee. While he tries to catch shrimps with a large landing net, a little further on, nature guide Louis van der Kolk drags a cornet behind him.
The waves are too high because there was a storm at sea a few days earlier and something almost went wrong. The men retreat. They do catch something special: the eggs of a cuttlefish, a squid. But because we don’t want to eat it, the catch goes back into the sea.
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Pieter has cooked something delicious with the shrimps from plan B and kale from Wessel’s vegetable garden: Kale soup with chorizo and shrimps. “I absolutely love kale. I even founded the Kale Club for NH Radio, so I’m grabbing this opportunity with both hands!” The result is a wonderful Spanish/North Holland flamenco meets the clog dance.
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Kale soup with chorizo and North Holland shrimps
Ingredients for 4 people:
3 medium floury potatoes
1 small onion
100 grams of chorizo sausage
100 grams of peeled Dutch shrimps
250 grams of chopped and washed kale
2 stock cubes (chicken or vegetable)
Salt and pepper
Supplies; blender
Recipe
Peel and cut the potatoes into cubes, roughly chop the onion and cut the chorizo into half slices.
Place a stockpot over medium heat and add the chorizo. Stir until it is nicely fried and remove the chorizo from the pan and set aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper. Leave the fat that came out of the sausage in the pan!
Fry the onion in the chorizo oil in the pan until translucent and add the potato. Stir well, add the stock cubes and deglaze with water until the potato is just covered. Bring to the boil and let cook for 5 minutes. Add the kale and cook until the potato is done. Turn off the heat and put the hand blender on. Season with salt and pepper if necessary.
Finish by putting the soup in a bowl and adding the chorizo and shrimp on top.
Enjoy your meal!