plonq | Soup

Good doesn't have to be expensive.

atara and I grabbed a few leeks and onions when we hit up the farmers' market on Wednesday. Although I wasn't quite sure what it entailed, I had this tentative plan to turn them into soup this weekend. Since we still have some potatoes left from an earlier trip to the market, I decided to toss them into the mix as well. This afternoon I started surfing for a recipe, and I stumbled onto one by James Barber. I became a big fan of his cooking style when I was a bachelor, in part because he was an avid proponent of the "one pot, one meal" school of cooking. He also preaches a very peasant-like approach to cooking, often giving instructions like, "Add about as much as you think it needs", and "cook it until it smells about done".

Since this was a James Barber recipe, I knew that it would be 1) good, 2) easy, and 3) in many respects just a recipe foundation to build on.

The recipe said to dice 3 leeks, 2 potatoes and a medium onion. Stir them in hot oil for awhile, add salt, pepper and nutmeg and then cover the lot with water and cook it for about 30 minutes, then blend it and add some milk (or optionally purée it and serve it cold the next day).

I had 5 leeks instead of 3, and our potatoes were fairly small, so I grabbed 4 instead of 2. I also doubled the onion while I was at it. Rather than oil, I cooked the diced veggies in butter (with a bit of olive oil) to add a bit more flavour and richness. Rather than water, I used some low-sodium vegetable broth we had in the cupboard. I didn't measure the salt, pepper, or nutmeg. I just added what I thought it would need, and then adjusted them slightly after I'd tasted it. In the final step, I ignored the instructions on how much light cream to add, and I slowly poured it into the soup while I was blending it until it looked and smelled about right.

The soup was good. It was really good. If I ever make this soup again, it will turn out differently, but probably still be good. One of the things that I like about this seat-of-the-pants style of cooking is that you can make the same dish two days in a row and have a different dining experience each day. What I also liked about this meal was that, by my rough estimate, dinner for two cost us about $6.

Tomorrow I get to come up with some ideas for the eggplants that we also bought at the market. At the moment I'm leaning toward a green Thai curry, but we shall see.