My hubby and I went out for a lunch date yesterday. We went to this amazing little cafe. It is run by a husband and wife and everything is made from scratch. We tried a cream of potato and leek soup (last week we tried their cream of potato and fennel) along with their special of the day. Wow. It was probably the best soup I've ever had. Unreal the amount of flavor. We were so stuffed that we didn't really want much for dinner. The kids had leftovers.
We spent the rest of the afternoon canning. We did 10 pints of salsa, 9 jars of taco sauce, and 4 pints of tomato juice. I had tried making taco sauce once about 7 years ago but didn't like it. This was my first attempt since then. We just kind of made it up as we went along but I had my hubby guestimate his seasonings so that I could jot down the basic recipe.
12 cups tomatoes (peeled and chopped), 3 tablespoons paprika, 3-4 tablespoons oregano, 2 tablespoons cumin, 2 tablespoons salt, 2 tablespoons pepper, 2 cups onions (we used half red and half of it white), 4 jalapenos, 2 tablespoons adobo, 2 garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons sugar, 3 tablespoons lawry's, and 2 tablespoons chili powder. Saute the veggies and garlic in olive oil. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Put the sauce through the food processor and then can in a hot water bath for 35 minutes.
Lunch time rolled around today and I felt soupy. Ha. I wanted to go back to that cafe. I told my daughter about it and she wanted to try it too. My son had McDonald's on the way. We all ordered soup. I ordered the cream of potato and leek. My hubby got cream of potato and fennel. My daughter ordered fragrant lemongrass with karrif lime, bean thread noodles, & shrimp. Wow. Yum!
I decided to attempt my hand at making a soup similar to hers. I wanted to do both a fennel and leek combo. I wanted the leek to be the star so I decided to only use one of the two fennel bulbs that I had bought. I never make cream based soups so I was a little nervous. I once again jotted down what I added so that I could recreate this soup if it turned out well.
I sauteed one fennel bulb chopped, 2 leeks chopped, 3 1/2 cups diced potatoes, and one large bulb garlic diced in two tablespoons of butter. I seasoned them with salt, pepper, and garlic & wine seasoning. I let them cook on low for about 30 minutes. I added 4 tablespoons of local white wine. I didn't want them to brown but to just get tender. Ten minutes later, I added 1/2 cup of homemade vegetable broth and let it simmer for another ten minutes. I put the veggies into the food processor. It came out looking pretty similar to mashed potatoes (you could process it less if you want chunkier soup). I added it back to the pan and stirred in two cups of heavy cream. It was still missing something. I saw that I had a few sprigs of fresh thyme from my garden in the fridge. Perfect. It probably was about 2 tablespoons worth. I served the soup with a slice of fresh sweet bread (yep, from the cafe too) and topped the soup with green onion.
How did my first cream soup go? My hubby said it was very good. My daughter said it was phenomenal. My son said "woop woop"! Ha. I really liked it. I think the only change for next time will be to double the amount of leeks. This tasted really good but I want the leeks to really stand out.
Ok. Time to move on to warm apple pie...
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