soup, soup, beautiful soup!

Beautiful soup! (apologies to L. Carroll)

So, my most recent post concerns twice-baked potatoes. This recipe take that recipe and says: "Ha! You think you are delicious! I will show you! I am delicious and low-fat-ish! And I will feed an army! Take that, you fool!" Which, honestly, is really an un-called-for level of aggression, but you get the point.

Baked potato and leek soup. This is easy! My recipe, as always, is imprecise, but when I am struck by the mood to create, taking the time to write down measurements is such a drag, man.

Baked potato and leek soup:

4 potatoes
6 leeks
6 slices of turkey bacon, diced
2 cups of baby portabellas, sliced
2 cans of chicken stock (unless you have homemade, in which case, 4 cups homemade chicken stock)
Fake butter in abundance
1 % milk
Fat-free sour cream
Pinch dried sage
1 bay leaf

First, heat the oven to 400. Put 4 Idaho baking potatoes, pierced, in the oven for an hour. In the meantime…

Take a large stock pot. Heat it up to medium high. Add a dash of olive oil, about one tablespoon if you want to be anal about it. Let oil get hot but not smoking. Add diced bacon. Let it get kind of crispy but not burnt. (Is “burnt” a word? I had a Crayon labeled “burnt orange” as a child. Therefore, “burnt” is preferable to “burned” in my book.) Add sliced mushrooms. Saute a few minutes. I think I might have added a dash of Worchester sauce and a sprinkle of sugar, but hey, my memory’s not so hot. Then add the leeks and salt. Saute until soft. Add the chicken stock and herbs.

Ok, so now your potatoes should be close to finished. Once they are, proceed to make somewhat runny mashed potatoes with them and your milk and fake butter (reserve the skins). If you don’t care a fig about fat, make them with real butter and cream. Otherwise, if you, like the rest of us, occasionally cannot fit into your pants, make with margarine of choice and 1% milk.

Once the potatoes are mashed, add to the stock and stir vigorously to incorporate. Add the container of sour cream and stir with even more vigor. Voila! You have potato and leek soup!

The piece de resistance, of course, is topping the soup with fried potato skins. To do so, take the skins of the baked potatoes. Slice them into strips. Take a generous amount of olive oil (1/2 a cup?) and put in a sauté pan. Heat to high heat. Add the strips of skin and fry until very brown. Scoop out and drain on plates lined with paper towel. Season liberally with garlic salt and pepper. Top soup with fried potato skins and, if you are a true gourmand, shred a delicious cheese of your choice and add to the soup before adding the skins.

The TOTT, a true connoisseur of soups, gave this her hearty stamp of approval, as did her disgusting little pug-dogs as they licked drippings off the ground. I hope you concur.