Soup Tuesday

Today, between working and catching up on the blog, I am making leek and potato soup, recipe courtesy of chocolate and zucchini again.

To start with, I had a chicken carcass in the fridge from a hickory-roasted rosemary chicken that Mike made a couple of days ago. There was too much flavor in that thing to let it go to waste. So I caramelized some mirepoix vegetables in my big stock pot (thank you Grandma and Grandpa). In English, that's an onion, two carrots and a stalk of celery, which is what I had on hand. I tossed in the carcass and boiled it up with approximately 12 pint glasses of water (that was the measuring unit I had on hand as well). Forgot entirely to put in the peppercorns, juniper berries and bay that I usually throw in, but there was so much in there already with the rosemary, garlic and hickory from the chicken that I don't think it needed it.

While it was boiling, I cleaned and chopped my leeks, then sweated them in a saucepan with olive oil, butter and salt. When they were done, I put them aside on a plate and about 10 small yukon gold potatoes took their place in the same pot, which was then filled to cover with the warm stock. I boiled the potatoes in the stock until they were soft, dumped the leeks back in the pot, added some more stock and pureed with my new stick blender (thank you Monty). Then I added more stock to get the right consistency, a little salt and fresh black pepper, and voila, dinner is made. Some nice bread and a salad oughta do it. Finally, I have cooked my way out of my veggie box leek back-up.

I see now from checking out the recipe that I could have boiled the leeks and the potatoes together in the stock and saved a couple of steps, but this was the way it worked out. Pretty tasty, very easy.