A Tale of Two Soups

I struggle with ratios. When I first started cooking in my tiny studio apartment, I was known for my vats of stir fry. It was good, but I made enough for about 20 people. My reasoning went something like this: “Why put in just pepper? I need a red, yellow, AND green pepper! And broccoli! And asparagus! And onions! And….”, well I think you get the point.

So when I had two bags of potatoes from my CSA, my thought was “Great! I can use up all my potatoes in a batch of potato leek soup!”

Do you know how much soup you make when you use two bags of potatoes?

In case you are wondering, this is what two bags of potatoes look like once they are sliced:

And how big is the bowl?

So, the answer is you make a LOT of soup.

More soup than my big soup pot can handle.

More than Manatee and I could ever eat. Especially since Manatee doesn’t like potatoes (which is why we have two bags of potatoes in the first place).

And because I have no concept of ratios, I bought 6 leeks at the store which was then complemented by the leek we got in out last CSA.

So I had 4-5 lb of potatoes and 7 leeks, and I quickly realized that this was going to be two sets of quadruple batches.

Batch 1: Julia Child’s famous potato leek soup with carrots, mainly because I had these gorgeous carrots from our CSA.

Batch 1 Recipe Review: Oh Julia, I was so excited to try your recipe. So excited! And when I was finished? Meh. The taste was alright. The appearance? It was so awful, I couldn’t take a picture of it. This is a food blog after all and it looked….well…I don’t even want to say what it looked like since this is a food blog. I was disappointed to say the least.

As the soup cooled, I realized that I didn’t even have containers for the soup. I contemplated dumping it but decided to keep it and plan on adding some zing to it when I ate it. I ran to the stores, bought some individual-sized freezer containers and froze most of it.

Then I looked at two bowls of potatoes and leeks. I had to make more soup, but how could I make it better?

I love ketchup on my mashed potatoes, so why not throw some tomatoes in the soup? This was going to go in the Julia batch but didn’t think it would fit in the pan so I resurrected it for the Badger Girl version. That was a good start but tomatoes wouldn’t be enough. I needed more zing so…

…I raided the garden and CSA share for hot peppers. I used 5-6 small hot peppers.

Badger Girl Spicy Tomato, Potato, Leek Soup

2 lbs potatoes, sliced
3-4 leeks, cleaned and sliced
4-6 hot peppers, chopped and seeded
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp of olive oil
5 cups of vegetable broth

1. Saute leeks, peppers, and garlic in olive oil in a big soup pot for 10-15 minutes on Medium Heat until leeks and peppers are softened. Stir frequently.
2. Add potatoes, tomatoes, and vegetable broth. Cover. Simmer for 20-25 minutes until potatoes are tender.
3. Use an immersion blender to blend until you reach your desired consistency.
4. Enjoy!