Soupe Savoyarde

So.... Recipes... Kinda put my foot in it haven't I? Now I have to actually provide recipes.... Dang it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not all secretive about recipes I use. It's more sort of I don't actually use them all that often. To make things worse, I usually cook in gargantuan quantities... I'm pretty good at predicting how much soup I'll need to feed 50 people, but I'm going on the assumption that you (yes my quasi regular readers this recipe is for you!) will not actually want to make soup by the gallon... I suppose I could test the smaller recipe, but I'm just gonna wing it. Really it's more fun this way isn't it? Isn't it? So here goes nothing....

Soupe Savoyarde is my most favouritest Fall/Winter soup ever. You can find recipes for it all over the place, so if you're super-chicken about trying an untested recipe I suppose you could look it up elsewhere. Here's what you need ingredients-wise:

• 1 turnip of medium size, peeled and diced. I favour yellow-flesh turnips. I suspicion they may be called rutabagas in other corners of the world...
• 3 large-ish potatoes, peeled and diced. Russets are nice but not necessary.
• 1 medium to large sized celeriac (celery root) peeled and diced or you can use celery (1 bunch, chopped) if you must. But it's awesomer with celeriac, so make a little effort k? Try the organic food store if you can't find it elsewhere.
• 2 biggish leeks, thinly sliced.
• 1 biggish onion, chopped.
• 1.5-2 quarts of stock. Which, if you want the soup to taste any good at all, you will make yourself. Relax, I'll tell you how.
• A quantity of hard white cheese (so cheddar, gruyere, parmesan which you personally have grated and that has not been sitting all dessicated in a green kraft jar since the beginning of time all work well).
• Homemade croutons, or if you're all lazy like me, some rounds of french bread sliced and toasted.
• Completely optional, but incredibly tasty, some nice streaky bacon. Mmmmm, bacon.
• If you're anti bacon, and let's admit it, there are a lot of reasons to hop on the pig-free wagon, use butter instead.
• 2 cups of milk.

And here's the method part of this recipe.

To make the stock you need a pot large enough to hold 8-10 cups of water plus a whack of vegetable matter. Put in the pot, in no particular order:

• 8-10 cups of cold water. Preferably not all full of chlorine, but it's your soup, so do what you want.
• The dark green ends of the 2 leeks
• The peelings from the turnips and the celeriac. Or if you're using celery instead, toss in a couple of stalks and the leafy bits from the centre.
• A carrot if you have it. But if you don't it's not essential.
• The outer skins from the onion. And maybe another small onion chopped in half. The outer skins are gonna make your stock a nice pretty colour, so even if you think they have no flavour (which I don't know, maybe they don't) put them in anyways. If you are feeling inspired, cut the base out of the small onion. If not, then don't. Your soup, remember?

Bring this fabulous mix to a full rolling boil, reduce the heat to somewhere between medium and low, and cook it uncovered for about 1/2 - 1 hour. Strain out the vegetable matter, reserving the liquid (it's your stock, don't throw it down the drain).

While the stock is simmering away happily, you can start on the rest of the soup. Dice the celeriac, turnip and onion. Size is not so important as consistency. Try to get the pieces about the same size from one veggie to the next, otherwise by the time one is cooked the other will be total mush. Make sense? Slice the leeks thinly. In a large soup pot, either fry the bacon (four slices should do it) until it starts to get all soft, or melt the butter. Whichever you are using do not burn it. Brown the sliced and diced veggies in the bacon/butter. Turn the heat way down, cover and let it cook gently for about 15 minutes. Check your stock it's probably done by now. And just in time! Add your 6-8 cups of stock to the pot. Peel and dice your taters, add them to the pot. Simmer until all the veggies are done, depending on the size of dice this should take 30-40 minutes. Taste your soup. If you used bacon you might not actually need to add salt. If you used the butter, you almost definitely will be wanting a little. Either way, season to taste with salt and pepper. Temper the milk with some hot liquid from your soup (if you don't chances are it will curdle). Stir in the tempered milk and bring the soup back up to temperature but don't let it boil(mmmm.... curdled milk). To serve, place the croutons or toasted bread on the bottom of a soup tureen, cover with shredded cheese (I leave the amount up to you), and pour the hot soup over it. If all goes well, the croutons should float up and be all covered in melted cheese. If this sounds way too complicated, you can put the soup in the tureen, put the toast/croutons and cheese on top and put it under the broiler to melt the cheese. Or you can just toss some croutons and cheese in your soup bowl. Or skip on the croutons and have some nice crusty bread with it instead (this is what I usually do).

So anyways, that's it. I hope it didn't seem too intimidating. It's really a very simple recipe, shouldn't take more than an hour or so to make. Well, maybe just a bit longer. But for the last 30-40 minutes you can sit on your butt and watch t.v. or make a salad to go with it... The soup I mean, not the t.v. I (oh frabjous day) have my camera back, but I have no actual photo of this soup... I'll try to take some food-related photo in the next few days to add to this post for visual interest.