Saturday, May 28, 2016

937. Vichyssoise (Leek and Potato) Soup


With the holy month of Ramadan approaching, I am always on the lookout for new soup recipes. Vichyssoise is a French soup created about a hundred years ago, made of leeks, potato, fresh chicken stock, and cream. The soup can be served cold or warm, as you would like it.
Of course, nowadays you can simply use reconstructed broth made from cubes, but I included a version of the original recipe, which boils a whole chicken with aromatics, and uses the broth of that. The chicken you can save for another use (recipe using it coming next), and the aromatics are discarded. To stick true to the nature of the vichyssoise, the puree is furthermore strained to yield an ultra fine texture to the soup.


Ingredients:

1 chicken, whole
2 liters water
2 onions, peeled, quartered
2 bay leaves
2 tsp whole peppercorns
2 tsp salt
3 large leek, white part only
4-5 large potato
1 cup cream


Method:

Combine in a large pot the whole chicken, water, onion wedges, bay leaves, salt and whole peppercorns.
Bring to a boil and lightly boil over medium heat for an hour and a half until the chicken is cooked through.
Save the chicken for another use; you will only need the broth. Discard the remaining aromatics.
Put the strained chicken broth in a new pot, adding water if necessary to make a total of 6 cups broth.
Add to the broth peeled and cubed potato, and the sliced and cleaned leeks (see note below on cleaning leeks).
Bring to a boil and lightly boil over medium heat for about 40 minutes.
Blend the soup, strain it for an extra-fine texture, and stir in the cream before serving.
Can be served hot or cold.

Note on cleaning leeks: Leek has a tendency to store soil and grit between its layers, and must be cleaned well before cooking with it.. To clean it, slice the leek into circles and put in a bowlful of water, separate the rings and swirl about in the water. The soil and grit should be dislodged and sink to the bottom of the bowl, whereas the leek will float on the surface. Repeat two or three times.


صحة و عافية


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