Leek and potato soup

this is a little embarrassing. when i was little, my mother grew leeks in her garden and she made us eat them constantly when they were in season. (as she did with everything that she grew. i’m still scarred by the memory of trying to trade desserts with my 5th grade classmates during the period of eating zucchini 3 times a day. but nobody wanted my zucchini cookies!) and the thing that i hated most was leek soup. but then, tastes change and now i love leeks (and zucchini, too, like this recipe…yummmm!)

i decided to make leek soup this year. i saw these three recipes (one, two, three), but none of them convinced me completely. so i did it my own way: very, very simple. to make 2-3 portions i thinly sliced 3-4 leeks and 2-3 potatoes into very small cubes. i sauteed them a bit in olive oil in a pot until the leeks were a little softened. then i added about one liter of hot vegetable broth (using the broth prepared like this. but in the comments of that post, roby suggested making your own homemade veggie boullion cubes, so i will do that when i’m out of frozen broth.) and i let it cook more or less 15 minutes, enough for the potatoes to be soft. salt the soup to your liking with salt, shoyu (soy sauce) and/or miso. and that’s it!

you could also add some chopped carrots, too, i bet. the soup is good with grated cheese on top or, as a vegan alternative, nutritional yeast. or, as i did with the onion soup from the cookbook il cucchiaio verde, you could also put the soup over hardened bread (or freselle) in individual earthenware bowls and grate emmental (swiss) cheese over it and bake it long enough for the cheese to melt. mmmm! i just made this recipe the other night, but just writing about it makes me want to make it again!