• Chop the onion into a fine dice. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven (or similar pot) and add the onion. Sauté on medium heat for about 5 minutes, until soft.
• Add the meat and slightly increase the heat. Move the meat around often in order to distribute the heat throughout and preventing it to clump up into meatballs.
• When the meat looks cooked through, stir in the spices: salt, paprika (sweet and hot) and dried thyme. Add some salt to flavour the meat, keeping in mind how salty the broth fyou will be adding is.
• While the meat is cooking, core and dice the bell peppers. Peel the potatoes and cut them into the same size dice as the peppers. Add diced veggies to the meat and stir.
• Pour in the stock and, if added cold, keep the heat on medium high to bring it to a boil. If adding it hot, you can lower the heat just to keep a gentle simmer. Stir in the tomato paste.
• Lastly, cut the cavolo nero leaves lengthwise along the middle to remove the tough stems and then coarsely chop crosswise and add to the pot. Stir and cover the pot leaving just a small crack for the steam to escape and let simmer for one hour.

Cavolo nero chips

• If you have extra cavolo nero leaves, remove the stems from the middle of the leaves by cutting them lengthwise. Once that's done, chop the leaves and add them to a bowl. Pour 1 tbsp of olive oil and vigorously massage it into the leaves with your hand. Spread out the leaves onto a baking tin lined with parchment paper, add a sprinkle of salt flakes on top and bake in the preheated oven at 150C (300F) for a maximum of 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they bake and take out of the oven before they turn brown. They will crisp up some more as they air dry.