Potato Leek Soup

I think it should be "Leek Potato Soup."  In my mind, the potatoes are secondary, but since I borrowed a recipe, I'll stick to the original name.  I've made this before, but I don't know what happened to that recipe so I had to go hunting for another.  This one comes from simplyrecipes.com.  I already had an idea about what I wanted to do, but I didn't want to screw up the method.  And I had leeks I bought a few weeks back at the farmer's market so I needed to get them into something.  It's not quite soup weather yet (might have gotten up to 90 today), but we're getting closer.  I love leeks and I don't know why I don't use them more often.  Even a little sprinkled in a salad would be awesome.
I love the way the leeks break down in the pot.  A little stirring, cover it up, come back a few minutes later to take a look and voila!  It's like spinach, or any greens for that matter.  Okay, I'm easily amused; or amazed.

What I love about this recipe is that once everything has simmered down, you remove half of it, blend it, and add it back.  That way you get the creaminess, but still lovely chunks of potato and ribbons of the leeks.  The only thing I added not on the list was during the simmering--two bay leaves.  When it was time to purée, I removed them.  I did use four cups of chicken broth rather than two cups broth and two cups water.  And at the end, I sprinkled grated Parmesan in rather than adding more salt.
I think the most time consuming part of the entire recipe is the cleaning and cutting up of the leeks.  The problem is that they're so dirty, you have to take them completely apart, rinse them well, then they don't go "back together" if you know what I mean and you have to pile them up and hold them tightly while cutting.  It made me think of when Lucy is in Havana making cigars and she keeps adding tobacco leaves and rolling them up till she has this HUGE cigar...but I digress.  That's sort of how I handled the leek "layers."
I may have mentioned before, mom makes homemade bread pretty often, so we had our soup with oven toasted (and slathered with butter) buttermilk bread she recently made.  Yum!

 

Happy eating!