potato leek soup not from a can

Seeing as how the subject of canned potato and leek soup has already come up, it's worth realizing that unfamiliar as it might be (Campbell's certainly doesn't make it) and in spite of the funny impossible-for-us-average-Americans-to-guess-its-pronunciation -except-if-we-heard-it -before-seeing-it french name you may find associated with it if you browse cookbooks for potato leek soup ["Vichyssoise" = "vishee-shwah", "ah" as in doctor holding down your tongue, say "ah"], it is a snap to do from scratch even without thinking ahead as long as at least one good sized leek is on hand. And it doesn't even have to be fat city—a healthy version tastes great too. [Nix that heavy cream!]

This lite version comes from a woman's magazine, found by accident when several years of several such mags went through the dr bob "maybe someday there will be enough time to look at these recipes after they go into the big recipe clipping box" editing session prior to house moving. [Actually the house stayed put. We moved.] The magazines easily gave up their food sections under the knife, at least those pages looking mildly interesting. [Too bad there was never time to check them out as they arrived in the mail.]

ingredients

what they said		what we [ms_ani] did
12 oz leek, trimmed, rinsed, chopped		we had 2 leek trunks in the fridge. chopped the greens seem to be useless so we disappeared them immediately, one 6oz, one 11+oz. we cut off the root end of the 11+oz trunk. good enuf.
1 T olive oil		we use extra virgin for everything
2 C pared, cubed potatoes		we are guessing pared means peeled here
1 clove garlic, crushed		we used 2 medium cloves
1 C low sodium chicken broth		we personally imported NO MSG veggie broth cubes from Italy until finding imported paste in a can here
2 C low fat milk		we were down to 2 percent milk when this was written, now 1 percent, how about you?
1 t salt		dr bob is often suspicious of this ingredient but what the heck, ms_ani wildly adds while bob advises caution
dash each of cayenne pepper, nutmeg		just a touch

instructions

Sauté the chopped leeks in olive oil over low heat for 5 minutes.
Add the potatoes, garlic and broth, and bring them to a boil. Then cover and simmer for 10 minutes, until soft.
Puree in a blender [use a hand blender].
Add the milk and seasonings. Mix some more.
Heat without letting boil. Serve.

notes

From McCalls Magazine, April 1992.
Healthy Food Analysis: Makes 4 servings. Per serving: 294 calories, 12g protein, 50g carbohydrate, 6g fat, 5mg cholesterol 920mg sodium
Yikes! does that mean 1 t salt is like 3700 mg? How much salt is too much? Everybody talks about it but nobody ever really empowers us with numbers, at least ones that we remember.
We used our manual vegetable slicer dicer on the leeks. And about 3 medium red potatoes. We squashed the garlic and then chopped it. For the broth we just put the cube in 1 cup of warm water and dumped it in mostly still intact. The blending part had to be done half a batch at a time, with one cup milk each pass, since blenders are not usually big enough [but the hand blender makes this step much easier].
Actually we lied on the last part, step 4. They said chill it and serve cold! And make a green pea puree [6 ingredients, more work!] to swirl around for extra flavor. Already we've made the big step to not open a can and they want us to double the labor investment—like making not one but two soups from scratch! Forget it. One is our limit. We just dabbed some hunks of nonfat plain yogurt into our serving bowls with freshly ground pepper. Yum. Excellent. And so easy. Especially when you have a partner who likes doing soups all by herself [but dr bob did the leek prep!].