Vichyssoise

There were just enough potatoes in my sack to make potato leek soup tonight.

Pshew! I'd've kicked myself if, after all that Meg Fry-making, I had shorted myself on a key ingredient for one of my Favorite Soups Evarr. So I am a happy Kitschenueberfrau this evening.

There is no point in getting fancy with Vichyssoise. The name is fancy enough. And the blending of flavors is so perfect that why mess with that? So pretty much straight from the Joy of Cooking, the 1975 edition, here is what I did:

Mince:
*3 medium cleaned leeks, white only
*1 medium onion
and sautee for 3 minutes (I had mine on medium heat &, stirring them occasionally, let them sautee as long as it took me to mince the potatoes.) in:
*2 Tb butter (you vegans already know to check for milk product in your margerine, right?)

Add:
*4 peeled and minced medium potatoes
*4c chicken stock (or, you know, veggie stock)
and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until veggies are very tender.

Puree, in whichever manner your faith dictates.

Back over medium-low heat, add:
*1/4 teaspoon mace (I had whole mace that I mortared & pestled, then added before pureeing. It is so good with whole mace, OMG! Or if you don't have that, grate from a whole nutmeg; it's from the same plant. Or if you don't have that, then used powdered mace or nutmeg, but I hope it's less than a year old. Or if you don't have that, go with the spice sand you've been carrying with you through several moves, but use a mite more because that crap will taste like nothing. Nothing! Then get yourself to the natural food store and stock up from the bulk bins, because Jeez you deserve better!)
*S&P to taste
*1-2 cups cream (or better for your heart, half and half. Or even better for your heart but less better for your taste buds, whole milk. I believe, when I worked for the Saturn Cafe, I made successful vegan Vichissoise by adding unsweetened unflavored soymilk at this stage. )

Heat until super steamy or even simmering. Ladle into bowls andsprinkle with fancy-pants minced watercress or chives. Because "if there's no green flecks in it somewhere, it ain't gourmet."--what I bet authentic big time cheffy types really do say.

Serve with salad and a Nass Watt Juan (because French accent.)

Scratching the kitchen itch

Tonight I had a couple friends over for dinner, and used the excuse to take care of some recent cooking urges.

Cauliflower Apple Soup with sage & brown butter
Couple weeks back I went to visit my friend Jane in San Francisco, where she has just moved, and we dined at Spork, a fresh-local-ingredients hipster joint that took over a KFC location. On the menu they had a soup as described above, and it looked so interesting that we ordered it. But the execution was meh. It was too salty, and the promise of tart apple was drowned out by the pungence of the cauliflower. Still, the idea was fabulous. So I made a better version at home, as follows.

Sautee in a soup pot on medium low, in olive oil:
*1/2 onion, diced (or one li'l onion)
*a couple stalks of celery, diced
Stir every so often, for 5 minutes or so; you want the veg to be soft and translucent, but not browned. This is key.

Chop roughly and add to the pot:
*one head cauliflower (to make a colorful soup, I used orange cheddar cauliflower)
*same volume of peeled tart apples ( for a medium head of cauli, I used three little apples)
sautee that for a few minutes, stirring now and then. Again: no browning!

Add
*1/2 a quart-size carton of chicken or veggie stock, cover.
Once it boils, reduce heat to low, and let simmer 15 minutes or more. When veggies are super soft and liquid is reduced, remove from heat.

While the veggies are cooking, put
*2-3 Tablespoons salted butter
in a small skillet or pot over low heat and slowly, slowly brown.
While the butter is browning, mince
*2 teaspoons fresh sage
and add to bowned butter right as you take it off the heat. Sage should sizzle for a moment or two then settle down and make your nostrils happy. Set aside.

After you take the veggies off the heat, puree them. Blender, blending wand, potato masher, or old fashioned ricer. You want a smooth consistency. Return to heat.

Add:
*the other 1/2 of the stock carton
and cook over low heat for further flavor melding. After 15 minutes stir in:
the brown sage butter
and stir a few times so it's all swirly but not completely incorporated. Then when you ladle it into bowls it's still kinda swirly, and your friends will call you fancy.

This worked out well. The ratio of apples to cauliflower was right on. I avoided the bitterness of the cauliflower by sauteeing the veggies on lower heat, and the brown butter contained all the salt the soup needed. The chicken stock acted as a flavor bridge between the cauliflower & apple. And with the earthy sage, it tasted like autumn in a bowl. Serves 4. It's nice with steamed artichokes.

Featherlight Kale Chips
The collard version I made last week turned brown in spots, so I checked back with Mike at my favorite farm stand. He advised me to cook the greens longer over lower heat. So:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Wash & dry:
*one bunch of greens. (collards = good, and tonight's Lacinato or "Dino" kale was also a winner)
Cut the leaves lengthwise along either side of the spine. (You may want to save the spines back for veggie scrap broth.) If you like, cut the lengths of leaves in half crossways. Or whatever shape seems good.

Toss in a big bowl with:
*1-2 Tablespoons olive oil
*salt & pepper to taste

When the leaves are all coated, spread them over 2 cookie sheets and bake for 30 minutes.
Out of the oven, they will remain green but be much smaller, like veggie shrinkydinks. Slide into a bowl & serve as "mouth occupiers" for appetizer, card games, movie time, etc.

Variation on Meg Fries
My friend Meg makes the best fries. That is just The Facts, so there is no point in disputing it. Anything I do frieswise will necessarily be a tribute to her frites prowess.

How she does them:
-peel too many potatoes
-cut them into genrous fry-shaped chunks
-dry off the slices (KEY STEP FOR BROWNING)
-toss in olive oil, salt & pepper
-and toss with optional goodies: sliced garlic, rosemary.
-spread out in baking pans
-bake for a good long while, like an hour, at 350 or so.
-munch mightily and weep bitter tears when they are all gone.

The variation I tried:
-cut up some potatoes & prep as above. AND
-peel and cut some parsnips, too. (Add any veggie peels to the running scrap bag in your freezer, and make broth later.) The 'snips were drier than the potatoes, so didn't need to be hand-dried. Advantage!
-My old boss the farmer has a friend who swears that duck fat is the best thing to cook fries in. I had some schmaltz leftover from a chicken I cooked down for stock, so I tossed the fries in that along with the salt & pepper. The farmer's friend: "That is not a duck!!" Me: [shrug] Vegetarians: "!!?!"
-salt, pepper, baking pans, same time and temp.

Big hit at dinner tonight. I cooked the taters and snips together, and maybe oughtn't to have done so. The snips cooked quicker that the taters, and were a little tough. So sweet, though! Mmm. So next time I will cook them in separate pans, and take the 'snips out sooner.

Update: farmer Amy says she cooks em at 400 degrees 30 minutes or so. I tried that, and at just shy of 40 miutes (in my oven, anyway) they were perrrfect.

I quit driving the farm truck and became a mediation coordinator. I got kicked out of my Coastal dreamscape (thtoopid "I can't afford to rent when I own a place" landlord) and moved to an apartment on the cliffs of another Coastal dreamscape. Blah blah, my life is unpredictable/charmed, whatever, I don't have time for these catch-up details! It is soup season, dammit! And at a good friend's request, I am posting the cooking details of the season.

Already I have cooked a chicken down for stock, saved back the shmaltz for parsnip fries and matzoh ball soup, shredded much of the chicken for mole verde or amarillo of the future, cracked the bones and cooked the stock down further for velvety texture, made chicken soup from that, then fed the cooked bones to the pet rats Pickle and Caper (for their teeth) (now there are pet rats, rest in peace my Bobba cat).

I have pulled the veggie scrap bag out of the freezer and dumped it in the pasta pot colander to make more stock, soaked the barley overnight, boiled the mild chicken Italian sausage in the veggie stock, then made mushroom-barley-beet green-sausage soup.

I cut some sort of green (collards? It was in the CSA share I got for being Free Wheelin' Farm's Raffle Grrl) off the spine, tossed them in olive oil salt & pepper, laid them out on cookie sheets, and baked them at 350 for a few minutes until they were feather-light crispy green chips. That was a tip from Redman House farm stand's guy Mike.

That's all in the past three days. I am Li'l Miss Kitchen Mania over here. And I still have to get to the leeks & potatoes waiting their turn to become Vichissoise, and what about the winter squash? There Will Be Pie. And there will be more details about all these things later. I am assuming those dishes will get done later, too. Pickle and Caper better get on it. There are a lot of dishes. Lazy rats!