Potato-Leek Soup or Vichyssoise is a miracle of a winter meal.
If you only knew how many soups you could make from this easy and delicious recipe, well, you'd be sipping some right now.
The soup is often enriched with sour cream or heavy cream or creme fraiche, but it can be just delicious without a drop of dairy.
The find of a January winter grocery shopping trip was some beautiful Mache or Lamb's Lettuce. Vichyssoise is the perfect base for the addition of bit of winter greens, such as Mache or Watercress. Kale and potato have natural affinity for each other. A nice loaf of crusty bread and you've got dinner. For those of us trying to "eat local" (it's not a noun, but this horse has left the barn long ago!) leeks and kale are both vegetables in the Northeast that are available from local farms this time of year. Potatoes are wonderful and also local.
Potato-Leek Soup or Vichyssoise
Here is your starter recipe.
- Peel, cube and boil two medium sized Yukon Gold potatoes in one carton of low sodium chicken broth or water. (Use water for more delicate greens or broth for more hearty ones.)
- Rinse leeks (equal portion to the potatoes) well slice white part and just a bit of the bright green part, add to potatoes and water/broth.
- When potatoes are soft puree them using a stick blender or regular standing blender. (A food processor isn't a wise choice for soups because the hot liquid will seep out - not fun!)
- After the potatoes are mostly processed, add the mache to them.
- Season with salt and white pepper.
If desired, enrich with milk or cream.
Variation: Add Mache; watercress, spinach or other winter greens.
- Blanch mache in boiling water a few seconds, just until the color brightens, then quickly strain it into a bowl of ice water to arrest the cooking. This will preserve the bright green color.
Lamb's Lettuce, Mache, Feldsalat or Corn Salad
This delicate green is known mostly as a salad green from the valerian family. It grows in sandy soil and curls up in rounded leaves in rosette bunches. The rounded leaves are said to resemble lamb's tongues. With a sweet, slightly nutty flavor, it pairs well with many flavors and is often dressed very lightly. Walnut oil would be perfect. Use it as you would spinach. It has good amounts of betacarotene and vitamin C, especially when compared to other greens such as romaine lettuce or loose leaf lettuce:
Mache: 24 calories; 4.8 mg betacarotene; 43 mg of vitamin C; iron 2.4 mg
Romaine: 16 calories; 1.7 mg betacarotene; 27 mg vitamin C; iron 1.2 mg;
Looseleaf lettuce: 20 calories; 1.3 mg betacarotene; 20 mg vitamin C; 1.6 mg.
Amounts in 2 cups raw.
Winter mache is darker, in spring it's paler. Both are fairly delicate.
Perhaps Rapunzel's mother was suffering from vitamin C deficiency, it was for mache that she destined Rapunzel to her tower.
Jacqueline Church - Award-winning writer, speaker, teacher on topics at the intersection of gourmet and sustainable food issues.
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