Leek, parsnip, potato soup

The leeks are filthy.

The base of the soup is turkey broth prepared earlier and frozen. Otherwise chicken broth. The kind in the carton is best. Tinned is okay. Chicken bouillon cubes are not okay.

* bay leaves

* salt/pepper

* nutmeg

* potato

* cream

Basic leek and potato soup except with parsnips. Vegetables boiled to softness then blended. I use an emersion blender because it is efficient and I am lazy about cleanup. The Cuisinart can do this and so can a regular blender. That produces a thick rich vegetable and broth substance that is diluted with cream. The cream is heated separately and added to finish. The cream makes it. Milk will not do the same thing. Milk will dilute it but it will not contribute the silkiness that cream does. Even if you added butter.

Since cream, then nutmeg. The first thing you taste is sweetness. It is the kind of soup that once you set to it you cannot lift your head from until it is finished. Each spoonful demands an immediate next until it is completely gone and you're coaxing the last savory satisfying drop onto the spoon.

Duck and butternut squash soup

Gather 'round little darlings, collect yourselves. Let me help you out of your suffocating plastic wrappers there. 

There. Doesn't that feel better?

))) whap (((

Roasted. Why? To impart layers of flavor. 

By heat and by time starches denature to less complex sugar that caramelizes, the whole lot undergoes Maillard reaction and that contributes depth and complexity by layering vegetable flavors. It makes the difference between a superficial soup and one with depth and mystery and full-body satisfaction. That is my opinion and I'm sticky wicket.

I'm already finished with a large bowl of this soup and I want MOAR!

I walked back to Tony's for chicken stock. I was hoping for cartons and they do have them there. A nice selection too. They are all about $4.00 or $4.50 thereabout, I think. 

Tony's also has frozen broth I noticed but I mistook beef for chicken and got the price wrong. I thought it said $6.90 something like that, and I decided to go for it. But I was wrong, chicken is half that.

I met a woman right there and mentioned all this. She latched on conversationally eager to engage. She mentioned something about a television show, America's Kitchen, I think, and I responded with a similar anecdote. Then she went on about meringue cookies, showed them to me and other items in the specialty aisle and followed me around where I pointed out the duck legs on the way to the checkout. We puzzled over that and I bought more but she did not. Some salesman, I.  

This chicken broth of theirs that comes frozen is an excellent deal. It is the base of this soup. If I had used water the soup would be wan. 

You'd think the strong flavors would be the thing that makes all the soup-satisfaction, duck, roasted garlic, habanero, and they do, but without the base of stock they are all just various flavors in suspension and in faint competition. They never do manage to satisfy and you cannot add enough salt or MSG to compensate.

So for a vegetable soup first start with vegetable stock, that is the same thing in concentration to provide the soup a backbone as it were around which cooked vegetables are packed to provide body. That is, layers of vegetable flavors, roasted, boiled, and fresh. 

Man is this good. I feel guilty, actually, for eating the whole thing and not sharing. I have a whole pot and it is mine, mine, mine, all mine. 

I walked down to Tony's twice for this soup. I earned it.