Soup's On!!

For the past couple of days, it has been uncharacteristically stormy here in Seattle.  Strong winds and heavy rains have made it quite unpleasant outside.  But, the stormy weather has done nothing to dampen my spirit, and has in fact stoked my appetite...for soup that is.  Soup is just one of those great comfort foods.  It's filling and delicious, and on cold and blustery days, it's just the perfect thing to warm you up from the inside out.  I'm sure there are plenty of you out there that feel the same way.

So, I decided that tonight would be one of our soup nights.  Up until this point though, I had always "cheated" a little bit.  My favorite soup was one of those powdered cheese and broccoli soups.  Add 8 cups of water bring to a boil, add the powder, stir, simmer, serve.  Easy enough, and usually pretty good.  But, I'm moving away from the simple powder mixes and into the world of "from scratch".  So tonight's plan of attack was a potato soup, based on a recipe by Michael Chiarello of Bottega in Napa Valley.

When I got home, I jumped right into it, and quickly realized that this was pretty easy.  I cooked down some aromatics, then added some potatoes and chicken stock.  I let that cook for awhile so the potatoes could soften.  The hardest part is at this point is that I wasn't able to taste what was going on as it would have just been leek infused chicken stock.  I had to ride it out, and if the flavors didn't come together, pull out the leftover fajitas from a couple nights ago.

Once the potatoes were soft, I dumped everything into a blender to puree.  It was at this point that I realized the importance of one of those hand blenders.  I could have simply blended all of the ingredients in the pot rather than having to dump it into the blender and splashing it all over myself.  But, I managed to get it blended smooth and back into the pot where I added a little cream to smooth it out.  Then I added my own twist on it with some sauteed Canadian bacon, and a smoked mozzarella and cheddar blend, making it more of a baked potato style soup.  When I took my first bite, the taste was just what I had hoped for.  It was hearty and full of flavor, and the addition of the Canadian bacon really balanced out the potato flavor.  The only thing missing was a little green on the top, something like scallions, and maybe a little additional cream or butter to thin it out just a little bit more.

Overall, I would say that the first step down the homemade soup path was quite a success, and one that will definitely be repeated in the future, with a few more tweaks of course.  I had a lot of fun with the process as it was simple and not overly intensive, but created a lot of wonderful aromas throughout the process that just stoked the hunger, and made the final result just that much better.