Potato Leek Soup

Now that we are officially in fall–both on the calendar and by the weather–it’s time to break out the fall and winter foods. And what’s my favorite fall/winter food? Soup. Okay, maybe “break out” and “favorite fall/winter food” aren’t fair terms, since I’m really a person who loves soup and eats it all year round. Maybe it’s really “resume making it at home” once it’s no longer ridiculously hot and humid, instead of buying those tasty little containers of soup at Whole Foods.

As soon as the leeks started showing up at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago, I started bugging Noel about making soup. He held me off for a week or so–I mean he did have a point about it still being 80+ degrees and all–but soon he relented. The leeks were just too perfect to pass up. And we had all of those potatoes from our CSA to use.

There was only one choice and we were ready to pull out the potato peeler and the immersion blender and get to work!

Potato Leek Soup
Adapted from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food

Being a soup lover, I’ve made a lot of soup in my days. But potato leek is the one I always come back to–it was the first soup Noel and I ever made together, from scratch, and there is something about it that just fills me up like no other soup I’ve found. It’s satisfying but simple, and oh so easy for a soup beginner to start on. You can easily adapt this recipe to make it heartier (try using chicken stock instead of water) or to add meat (bacon is delicious). I feel like this is the soup that launched a thousand soups–at least in our house.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds leeks, trimmed, cut in half lengthwise, and sliced thin
• 3 tablespoons butter
• salt and pepper
• 1 pound yellow potatoes, peeled, halved, and quartered
• 6 cups water
• 1/3 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Thoroughly rinse the leeks in cold water. Melt the butter in a large stockpot over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add leeks, salt, and pepper. Cook until leeks are soft, about 10 minutes. Add the prepared potatoes. Cook for 4 minutes. Then add 6 cups of water and bring to boil. After the mixture begins to boil, reduce to a simmer.

Cook until vegetables are tender, but not falling apart, about 30 minutes. When done allow soup mixture to cool slightly before using an immersion blender or food processor to puree potatoes and leeks. After mixture is smooth, add 1/3 cup cream and heat soup until it reaches the desired serving temperature. Garnish with salt and pepper before serving. Make sure you have plenty of crusty bread on hand to soak up the goodness.

Even there are only two of us, we always make a whole pot of this and save the leftovers for subsequent dinners. It always brightens my day to know that a bowl of this soup is waiting for me after work.

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