Parisien Leek Soup for James

There's a lot of history behind this recipe. At the request of an old acquaintance, James, whose memory of this soup remained intact twenty years after I first made it, I unearthed this recipe from a small box of childhood keepsakes.

The soup was made for an elementary school French class potluck. My classmate,  James, sampled it and dropped a leek soup reference many years later when he saw my food blog. Gary, my first crush, was  also one of the people who sampled it. He ate three bowls of the soup and told me how much he loved it.  I made this soup with my class partner who was also my best friend. Ten years later, my soup-making partner-friend seduced the man (a little reductionist here) I was madly in love with for most of my twenties. But what do you know about these things or the future when you're a kid. You're not wise enough then to see visions of the future and other portents in the making of soup. 

Really, there's a lot to making serious soup. And this recipe, baby, it's got history. Love food with a twist.

When I examined the recipe, scrawled in my childish hand, I marvelled at its simplicity. There is no pureeing of the soup to create an easy to photograph, perfectly groomed soup that one adorns with walnuts or ash-cured chevre or artistic drizzles of olive oil. Inspired by James' request, I went to the market and bought some leeks, lovely with their groomed tips.

The soup is simple enough to make. I say this because the night I made it, all I had to do was chop up the leeks and potatoes, essentially chuck it all into the soup pot, and then get on with the making of the all important Xmas cake. My mother recently parted with some of the family secrets and bestowed upon me the family recipe for rice flour dark Xmas cake. In our family universe, it's like getting knighted or something.

Here's the historically dramatic, but drama free original leek soup recipe:

Parisien Leek Soup

3 - 4 leeks
3 potatoes (I used red because I didn't have russet and they worked fine)
4 cups of water (I used the leavings of some broccoli water from my experiment with Gordon Ramsey's broccoli soup. Paired this with chicken broth)
1/3 cup of uncooked rice
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
2 - 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Method 

1. Trim the leeks, halve them and then slice thinly. Whichever way you decide to chop, just chop evenly. The original recipe says to throw the green bits away, but I always disobey and include them.

2. Heat your soup pot up and melt the butter over a low heat. Add the olive oil to minimize butter burn.

3. Cube the potatoes thinly. Don't do instant hashbrown thin. Chuck the leeks in the warmed up soup pot and saute them. When I made this twenty years ago, Viviane and I riffed on the original recipe and browned about half a pound of lean ground beef before we began to saute the leeks.

4. After the leeks have softened and look a bit transparent, add the potatoes and let them have a conversation with the leeks for 2 - 3 minutes. 

5. End the leek-potato conversation by adding the water/broth, salt and rice. Bring it up to a boil, then turn the heat down and let it gently bubble on your stove for about 25 - 30 minutes. The key to this is that you shouldn't let your potatoes fall apart. I found the stated requirement for liquid isn't quite enough. I added more liquid as it pleased me - mostly to maintain a state of soup liquidity that worked for me.

6. Near the end of cooking, add the parsley. If you don't have parsley, add tarragon. Just don't go too crazy. Test the soup for salt and doctor as needed. Serve it with French bread and milk. This soup is very simple but very tasty.