MoFo Day 7: Mighty Potato-Leek Soup

Guest post by my husband!  Things have been crazy over here.  Back to normal blogging tomorrow, but for now, have this in lieu of a Friday post.

Mighty Soup

...more or less as made on October 8th, 2009.

This is based on a soup I was taught how to make a long time ago. It's

pretty basic, with lots of things to do differently based on what you happen

to have kicking around the kitchen. I decided to modify this version based

on having watched several seasons of Top Chef and on a quick skim of some

soup recipes in Anthony Bourdain's "Le Halles Cookbook." 

Ingredients:

- 1 good-sized leek. Sing a Finnish folksong as you pick it out.

- 2 good-sized onions.

- 2 heads worth of peeled garlic. 

- A small pile of little potatoes.

- Some kind of veggie broth.

- 1 block of some kind of tofu. Press out as much liquid as you can. Firmer

is definitely

better. More on this later. 

- Some kind of fake bacon. 

- 2 cups of some kind of cream substitute.

- Pepper, salt, turmeric, spices.

- Earth Balance or your favorite thing for sauteeing.

- One bottle of some kind of red wine. I used a Two Buck Chuck cabernet. 

Open the wine. It'll need to breathe, right? Keep telling yourself that and

pour yourself a glass to make sure it's palatable. Big pointy knives and hot

surfaces go much better with alcoholic beverages. 

Thinly slice the white part of the leek. 

Chop the onions and garlic into little bits. 

Cut the potatoes into roughly 1/2" pieces too. Don't cut yourself! Knives

are sharp!

Heat up some Earth Balance (which I will probably accidentally refer to as

"butter," but it could be whatever) in a large heavy-bottomed soup pot. 

Throw in most of the onion and garlic (reserve about 1/4 of the total amount

of each for later). Sautee until the onions are nice and soft and clear.

Don't burn them like I usually do on our crappy stove because it will taste

gross.

When the onions are ready, throw in the sliced leeks and turn the heat down

a little. You're going to just kinda stir them around with the onions and

garlic but mostly just let them hang out in there getting soft. You don't

want them to get any color here, just be squishy and nice. Yum. Set a timer

for 5 minutes (or more, whatever. I think I had them in there for closer to

10. This is the part I borrowed from Chef Tony B, who is my total food hero

even though he eats pigs by the sty-full). 

Meanwhile, in a sautee pan, heat up some more Earth Balance and start

sauteeing the rest of the onions and garlic. If you think I am being a

wanker by doing this separately you could probably do the tofu part in the

main pot but I think it would break up too much and my goal here was to have

chunks of sauteed tofu floating around in the soup. This might also be lame,

but I have no idea since all we had was some kind of very soft silken tofu [ed:  it was just "soft" tofu packed in water] that I thought I could press enough to get firm. It ended 

up more like kind of squidgey custard. 

So, yeah. If you have decent firm tofu, cut it into 1/2" cubes and sautee

with the onions and garlic until it's kind of, well, little toughish cubes

that will stand up to being thrown into soup. I don't know if this will

actually work since I ended up with a weird tofu scramble instead. Chop up

the fake bacon into little bits and add it here to taste. Too much and it'll

make the whole soup really smokey, but maybe you like that. I do! Yum!

When the timer on the leeks goes off, turn the heat up a bit so it's sizzly

and pour in a cup or so of the wine. Stir it around some more and pretend

you're an awesome chef deglazing things. Yeah! Top Chef, whoo! Then pour

in the broth and stir it around. Throw in the tofu/onion/bacony business

here too. (Deglaze that pan with some wine too if you want! Badass!) Pour

in some more wine, but save enough for another glass or two for yourself!

Now put in the potatoes. Also put in, oh, a couple of cups of water. And

some salt and pepper to taste. And a little turmeric. I dunno, do what you

think is a good idea here. 

Now heat the whole mess to a boil, stirring. Once it's boiling, turn down

the heat to simmer. Go read some web pages or a book or something for a

while while it cooks down. Stir occasionally. Give it, oh, half an hour or

so and check. The potatoes should be soft by then, so squish some pieces to

release the starch.

Taste it. How is it? Add salt and pepper to taste. (I had to add some salt

here.) Add other things if they seem like a good idea. Make sure the

potatoes are edible. 

Cook it down some more. It should thicken up. Taste it. Good? Throw in a cup

of the cream-like substance, let it simmer for a couple of minutes, and

serve with toast. 

That's basically it. 

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It made for some pretty delicious soup.  And hey!  After nine months of garlic abstinence, I can finally handle garlic again.