Weekend Plans

[unicornduke]

Today I'm driving down to the CTW-BUF game, which starts at 4:30. So this morning I'm running to the farmers market so I can pick up ricotta. I'm going to try making calzones tomorrow when the inevitable enormous storm dumps on us. Current prediction is 12-18 inches. Yay! I have the ability to work from home, so I'm all set. 

Anyone have a good potato soup recipe? That's going to be something I'm making later in the week, maybe next weekend if I do the stew hen and broth stuff.  

Comments

[graydon]

I almost never make soup as a "soup is the first step" sort of thing; I think of soup as something to do with leftovers.

What I do (and it's getting wintery enough that I'm thinking about starting this year's pot of soup) is save the onions-and-dripping-and-broth part of making a roast in a dutch oven; if I know I'm going to do this, I add more liquid (more fruit juice of some kind) to the roast. That makes sure there's a fair bit of broth.

Then there's various veggies; if at all possible, they're already-roasted veggies. Either flat-roasted on a baking sheet or roasted in a dutch oven. Quarter-inch-thick potato slices roasted in a dutch oven with duck fat are hard to beat. Carrot, parsnip (if you like parsnip), actual turnip, garlic, onion, all good things to add to the potatoes. (Diverse squash, too.)

So presuming you had roast for dinner with roasted vegetables, the next day is "put the onions-dripping-broth on the stovetop in a substantial pot"; that's usually a stock pot. Add what additional water you expect to need. Add a bit of salt. Get it up to a simmer; heave in the leftover roasted vegetables. Stir. If it won't swirl when stirred, add water until it will. Maybe put some more potatoes on to roast when the stock pot goes on to simmer and heave (most) of those in when they're done.

The meat doesn't go in the soup; that just makes it rubbery and sad. The meat gets sliced thin and layered into the bottom of the bowl and just-boiling soup goes in on top of it at serving time. (Or if it's roast chicken cubed up or torn up like it's going in chicken salad.)

This is an iterative soup; next roast's broth goes in. Next leftover roasted vegetables goes in. You can, if you've got time to take care of a few hours worth of simmering, heave cut-up raw vegetables in. If it starts to feel a bit thin, something fatty or some boiled-bone stock will fix that. (I have minced a pound of bacon ends and heaved those into the soup. It was a cold few weeks and that was just the thing.)

It's important to avoid stuff like barley, puffed quinoa, or leftover rice that can sink to the bottom of the stock pot and form a layer; that layer will then burn before the water gets to a boil next time you put the soup on the heat. This makes it hard to keep the soup running from December to March.

Spicing and herbs and stuff is an ongoing dialog; what does it taste like now, what do I want to amend that with? I usually put thyme and tarragon on the roast, so that starts things in a particular direction, but this is not a fussy approach. If you want to heave in Allspice or Old Bay or enough garlic to have your diplomatic credentials to Transylvania revoked forever, that can all work.