Sopa de grão com espinafres

The story

Sopa de grão com espinafres is an everyday Portuguese soup rather than a dish tied to one feast, but its pairing has a place in Holy Week. In the Algarve, salt cod is one of the main dishes of the week, above all on Good Friday, and one traditional way to serve it is with chickpeas and spinach. This soup keeps the chickpeas and spinach and leaves out the fish, which makes it a meatless pot for the weeks between Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2027, and Easter. In parts of the Beiras meat stays off the table until the Enterro do Bacalhau, the burial of the salt cod, which marks the end of Lent.

The method in Portuguese recipe magazines such as Teleculinária is thrifty. Potatoes, onion and leek simmer with half the chickpeas, the pot is blended smooth with an immersion blender, and the remaining chickpeas go back in whole with the spinach leaves and a pour of olive oil. The blended chickpeas and potatoes thicken the soup without cream or flour.

With canned chickpeas it takes under an hour, so it works as a weeknight Lenten supper with crusty bread, or as a first course before a fish main dish on Good Friday.