Wellygogs

by Jayne

All you ever wanted to know about ...

“Couves” or cabbage or more specifically “couve-galega” or Portuguese cabbage. Probably the most important word in Portuguese you will need to know after please and thank you. The Portuguese treat their cabbage with as much respect as the English treat the weather and talk about it as much too. I challenge anyone of you to show me a Portuguese vegetable patch or garden in general which is cabbage-free. Even I’ve got them and I’m the least likely person in the world to actually do any gardening/veggie growing. I’m a wannabe gardener (hence the wellies) just as I was a wannabe skier, i.e. a poser who struts around the ski stations in full gear but never actually goes up or comes down anything (unless the loo is on the first floor!) but it makes you feel good.

I am digressing! I was sitting at the table after dinner pondering life in general as I usually do. That’s the best part of dinner – the end (I’m not a cordon bleu). I get to sit on my own, drink half a bottle of wine and smoke a ciggy and ponder … I suddenly got the urge to waffle. It just comes over me like menopausal hot flushes or something. I haven’t actually got there yet but maybe this is a preview of things to come. Blimey, hot flushes must be bad enough but when you have the urge to waffle at the same time … doesn’t bear thinking about. Better warn my kids they’re in for hell in the near future! They’ll be coming home and asking “Where’s Godz?” “Upstairs. Hot flushing and waffling!!”

I continue to digress. Anyway, back to the cabbage patch. Where else would one be, hot flushing and waffling in ones wellies? Silly woman, control ya self! I'd never ever seen anything like it before I met my Portuguese hubby (not that he had any on him when I met him) and neither have my visitors so unless you live close to a Portuguese enclave (or in Portugal), you won’t have either. What do you see in your mind’s eye when you think of cabbage? If you don’t have a veggie patch, you’ll probably see a round, green, leafy thing in a plastic bag at Tesco’s or if you do have a veggie patch, you’ll think of a round, green leafy thing which grows near the ground without a plastic bag. Wrong! Portuguese cabbage is not round, has green leaves and does not grow near the ground. It has a trunk which starts off as a stalk but the silly stuff just keeps growing so the stalk gets thicker and thicker and longer and longer. So when little Portuguese kids ask their mums where babies come from and the reply is from under the cabbage, they answer “Yeah, right! Dah!”

I have seen Portuguese cabbage trees which have attained a height of 3 metres. When they get to a height of about two metres, things get interesting. They start to bend from the weight of the leaves or not, depending on god knows what. Some continue to grow vertically and others take on a life of their own. I had to saw down, yes saw (!) a couple of the b@ggers this week because they’d become aggressive. They were hanging over the fence of what used to be my husband’s veggie patch and everytime I passed on the way to the washing machine, they nutted me in the face! It’s bad enough having to traipse down to the bottom of the garden to the washing machine in the rain but when one is aggressed by a delinquent cabbage, it’s time to take drastic measures so out came my saw. They have been suitably laid to rest. When the stalk is thin, they break off quite easily but the ones I chopped down needed some real muscle power. These particular cabbages were planted by my husband probably about three years ago! They’re indestructible and I’ve no idea how long they will keep growing, indefinitely probably.

What purpose do they serve? Basically to make “Caldo Verde” which literally means green soup. Caldo Verde is served ceremoniously at any kind of social gathering purporting to be a festa. The giant leaves are stripped off the plant, finely shredded and added to a soup base of potato, stock cubes and “salpicão” which is a kind of smoked meat sausage (nothing like chorriso – absolutely no fat/grease but it’s got a wonderful smokey flavour). Anyway, it’s very tasty and a festa isn’t a festa without caldo verde. But why anyone would want so much of it is a mystery. Considering the way it grows and lasts forever, a couple of plants would be enough for anyone but no, single families will have rows of the stuff. In fact any spare bit of ground will have couves planted in it.

The only reason I keep mine is that I’m fascinated by the stuff and I use it to make soup every now and then or put it in the dogs’ pan of food which I make up. They love it! They have lots of different varieties of cabbage (the Portuguese, not my dogs) but this is my particular favourite because it’s got so much personality. The others are just mere cabbages.

Anyway, here’s the picture I took of a particularly tame specimen and I thought I’d throw in a picture of my bantam cockrel too. Isn’t he a handsome fellow? He’s got a girlfriend which he brought home from one of the neighbours’ at the beginning of the spring (they don’t fly but they can jump (high) walls). No-one’s come looking for her and she isn’t very interesting in going home so they’re living in sin at the moment. Makes a change from dogs and cats.