For a week or so, winter threatened to make an appearance here in Adelaide. But then it disappeared and we’ve had the warmest couple of May weeks for about 100 years.
Which is a shame because I love winter food. I not only love eating it but I love that so often it is the type of food you can prepare well in advance and then just pop into the oven after a long day at work, leaving the cook with nothing more strenuous to do than crack open a bottle of red.
Earlier this week we revisited the leek, chicken and hazelnut pie (yes, all the way back in 2009!) and I’d had to buy a whole bunch of leeks.
So now I’m busy using them up. Which isn’t a problem because I love leeks. I also love soup and while it’s not Andy’s favourite thing to eat (by a long stretch) he’ll tolerate it in small doses.
I’d also been thinking about how I hadn’t really used any of my cookbooks for a while so while I didn’t need a recipe for leek and potato soup I had a quick flick through for inspiration. Regular readers will know I have something of a soft spot for James Martin so I was pleased to find a leek, potato and Stilton soup recipe in his book The Collection
His recipe needed a few tweaks to suit what was actually available so it’s my version that follows. The critical thing here is that it’s a one pot, boil it all up trick. Go easy with the blue cheese: they vary in strength and if you add too much you’ll really notice it!
This recipe will serve four. Make sure you have plenty of good, crusty bread to hand!
Ingredients
- 1 chicken stock pot (or cube)
- 700 mL hot water
- 1 medium sized leek, sliced in half (split) and chopped
- ½ large onion, roughly chopped
- 1 large clove of garlic, chopped
- 1 large potato, peeled and chopped
- 100g blue cheese, chopped
- sour cream
- parsley
Instructions
- Place stock pot (or cube) and water in a large pot and bring to the boil.
- Add the leek, onion, garlic and potato to the stock and cook covered (you don't want the liquid evaporating!) until the vegetables are soft.
- Add half the blue cheese and stir to melt. Then blitz the soup and check the flavour. You need to check the strength of the blue cheese flavour AFTER blitzing as it's the only way of guaranteeing the flavour is through the soup.
- If you want to add more cheese, go ahead.
- Finish by correcting the seasoning - it's unlikely you'll need salt though you might want to pass the pepper separately.
- Serve the soup hot, with a quenelle (that's a dollop!) of sour cream and a sprinkling of parsley.