Don't be silly, the soup is Irish - recipe

Potato and leek soup Picture and story Tony kackman

Potato and leek soup Picture and story Tony kackman

Published Jul 22, 2015

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Cradock - Soup is the beloved aunt of the culinary world.

The rosy-cheeked homemaker with her beige ceramic mixing bowl and a right arm strengthened by her fortitude in beating the wooden spoon. The no-nonsense matron stirring a bubbling cauldron to feed a boarding school army. The hockey mom rounding up the kids and their neighbourhood friends to lick the bowl clean and, later, decorate the cupcakes.

Soup is a warm hug, a squeeze on the cheek, a smiling wink. Soup is kindly, affectionate and forgiving, and nothing is better if you’re feeling miserable, fretful or just cold from winter’s grip.

Soup is also a serious business and not to be trifled with. Every nation has its own way with a broth, and treasured recipes not easily parted with. Trifle with minestrone and a Mafia Don may ask a flunkey to keep an eye on you and your family. Mess with miso and you may be met with a Shogun’s displeasure.

I wouldn’t fiddle too much with a pea and ham soup recipe either if you don’t want to start a war between Britain and the Netherlands, both of which would prefer to claim the dish as their own.

The English cannot, however, claim responsibility for leek and potato soup, which (and keep a ladle to hand in case there are any French nearby) is more correctly attributed to the Irish. But the Welsh will take issue with that, and these two near neighbours are not necessarily all that fond of each other. As a Welshman once said: “The Welsh are Irish who can swim.” Or it may have been an Irishman who said the Irish are Welsh who can swim. Whatever.

Then again, chill a leek and potato soup down to fridge temperature and you have a French bowl of Vichyssoise, you might think, except that it turns out to be an American invention, so there’s another war in the making and one which France hasn’t a hope in hell of winning now that there’s another Bush hoping to run for the White House and, if he’s like dad and Dubya, bomb the hell out of anyone out there who gets stroppy with the US.

Wikipedia quotes a New York chef, Louis Diat, as saying in 1950 that decades earlier, in 1917, he had adapted his childhood memories of his mother’s and grandmother’s potato and leek soup for guests at the Ritz-Carlton in the Big Apple. “I recalled how during the summer my older brother and I used to cool it off by pouring in cold milk and how delicious it was,” he told New Yorker magazine in 1950. “I resolved to make something of the sort for the patrons of the Ritz.”

The New Yorker piece cites the original name for the soup as Crème Vichyssoise Glacée. Diat claimed to have named the dish after Vichy, a town near his home village in France.

Potatoes and leeks. Come on, it’s Irish. Anything else can only be an adaptation or a borrowing. Both key ingredients are as Irish as wearing silly green hats, believing in fairies, saying Hail Marys and siding with Germany in World War II. Got to love the Irish, who will side with villains just to make the point that no way in hell would they ever side with the English.

If you don’t believe that the Irish believe in fairies, when I visited the Ring of Kerry (it’s a part of western Ireland, nothing to do with the US secretary of state) in the mid-1990s I spotted a narrow path leading off into the woods and, at the entrance, a rickety wooden sign with the legend, “The way the fairies went”.

I still want to go back and go down that path to see if they’re there.

Now then. You won’t be needing your aunty’s beige baking bowl for this but you will need a blender.

 

Potato and leek soup

3 Tbs butter

1 large onion, sliced

6 fat leeks, trimmed, washed and sliced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

8 medium potatoes, peeled, washed and cut into quarters

1 litre vegetable stock or chicken stock

100ml full cream milk

200ml cream

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter and sauté the onion, leeks and garlic until soft. Add diced potatoes and leave on the heat, stirring, for about five minutes.

Add the stock, season well, bring to a boil and then lower to a brisk bubble. Season well.

When the potatoes are cooked (about 20 minutes should do it), stir in the milk, bring to a simmer and allow to cook gently for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, cool a little, and then blend thoroughly. Once finely blended, stir in the cream and bring back to a simmer. for a few minutes.

Check seasoning and serve with chopped chives.

Next day, have it for lunch and call it Vichyssoise.

Weekend Argus

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