Vegan Potato Leek Soup Potage Parmentier*

The recipe I’ve been using for the last twenty years comes from my Dining with the Impressionist Cookbook. It’s referred to as Parisian Vegetable Soup, a variation on the famous Vichyssoise. Isn’t this fun…

Typically, I serve this crowd pleaser (Peter) with a tossed green salad, sliced oranges sprinkled with almonds, honey and cinnamon. Potato leek soup touches all bases with its beauty and it’s ultra simplicity.

“In the late 1770’s for the middle-class women the home was the center of their lives, where they focused on domestic life and the rituals of eating, drinking and entertainment. The woman ran the household and depending on her situation in life, either supervised or undertook many household chores, such as the cooking. Traditional French home cooking consists of recipes handed down from mother to daughter (yep, I can attest to that) with regional variations. Soups were an integral feature in the cuisine, and until well after the Revolution (and longer in many rural areas) soup was the last meal of the day- the word soupe originally referred to the slice of bread onto which the contents of the cooking (potage) were poured.”

–Dining with the Impressionist Jocelyn Hackforth-Jones

Oh my gawd how did I miss this very valuable information; “pour over a thick slice of bread”. Rick is going to cry with joy 🙂 Also, a tip for buying the leeks if you never have before; buy the ones that have a lot of the white, and the lime green. Because you’ll cut off the deep green colored tough ends. ( BTW the small thin bunches can be referred to as ramps.)

So, let’s go back to Cooking for You My Love’s post: The Humble Spud where we visited the cost of how to stretch and feed four people dinner with a $2.14 cent bag of russet potatoes. Well, here’s another wonderful, comforting meal coming out of that same 5lb. bag of potatoes. For example, at WalMart you can buy a bunch of leeks for $2.98, one bunch of fresh parsley for $0.88 cents and Marketside baguette of sourdough at $1.86. When I make our potato leek soup, it’s even better the second night. So that’s two nights of pure tasty comfort 🙂 Counting half the bag of potatoes.

$1.07 potatoes

  2.98 leeks

  0.88 parsley

  1.86 bread

= $6.79

I’m loving those numbers! Sure, it takes planning and preparation, but what else is there to do, besides wring our hands and watch the scary Covid numbers on the TV. Turn that damn thing off. Get the gang involved with the peeling and the chopping, play some music and create a memory.

Not to be a bore, but get this; one cup of raw leeks contains 54 calories, 13g carbs, 1g of protein, 2g of dietary fiber. Leeks are high in Vitamin A (one cup offers 30% of daily requirement) and they are a good source of Vitamin C, Vitamin K and Vitamin B-6 as well as the minerals  iron and manganese. It all adds up to such goodness. There is such power in what we can do for ourselves, every little bit helps.

*Paramentier, I don’t know if recognized this name from my previous blog, but it was Antoine-Augustin Paramentier the famous botanist and chemist in the late 1700’s who persuaded the King of France to use the newly discovered crop to feed the starving population. From then, the ‘patate’ was adopted into their daily diet. And they have never looked back. How many people are so revered, a soup is named after them? The French love their cooks. I like that 🙂

*tureen, did you inherit an old soup tureen from a grandmothers dish set? If you have one stashed away in a cupboard this is a perfect time to get it out, fill it up and dramatically lift the lid to the enticing aroma of the dish. I’m looking at the pictures I took of our tureen. I wish it was something my grandmother left me, but in a way she did by giving me a good eye while estate sale shopping.

I’ve always likened our dining room table to an altar where so much of life is lived. Gathering together at the end of good, bad, weird, sometimes crazy days. And as I get older, prayerfully, I mean practically on my knees praying and giving real thanks from a heart full of gratitude, especially right now for how well Rick is doing. And for the gift of this blog, where week after week I get to share one of my passions, eating… I mean cooking 🙂

Ciao for now!

*40 minutes means 40 minutes… I dropped the potatoes into the boiling water and then cleaned kitchen, ran to the store to buy the aforementioned artisan bread, ended up doing some grocery shopping, put groceries away, took a walk with Rick to check out neighbors Christmas lights (cool very artsy, going to copy :)… so in other words, had to practically use a spatula to lift soup and plop it onto the bread in the bowl. In other words, my soup turned into the best mashed potatoes we’ve ever had. 40 minutes means 40 minutes.