Thankfully the rain is on hold today. The leaves are definitely on the turn now, and the trees are starting to look rather more thin and yellow than green and plump. With Toddler at nursery and no real reason to go out for a tortuous walk some fresh air, I thought I’d stay in and make some soup for lunch. My favourite quick and easy soup is good old leek and potato soup. Sadly I didn’t have any potatoes to hand. I did have sweet potatoes though, and a quick browse of the WWW revealed an abundance of recipes that weren’t particularly inspiring. So I opted to make it the way I always do, but switching around when I put in the potato, as sweet potatoes cook really quickly. I did find a version with loads of chilli which looked fabulous, but as I was serving this up to two smalls, I thought I’d better forgo the spiciness.
My sweet potatoes were white inside today! I haven’t seen these since I left South Africa six years ago. I’m so used to the bright orange ones that these came as quite a surprise. Presumably, the orange variety will give a more orangey coloured soup. This variety made it look remarkably like I’d used plain old potatoes.
Ingredients (soup for 2 not very hungry adults, a toddler and a baby):
1 extra large leek sliced
2 shallots chopped
1 extra large sweet potato chopped into smallish chunks (mine was white today, normally they’re that super duper carroty orange)
garlic (I used around 3 cloves but we LOVE our garlic in this house)
2 cups of hot stock (I used home made veggie stock)
Seasoning
Method:
Heat your pot with a lug of olive oil in the bottom. Add in shallots, turn down the heat and clamp on a lid and sweat the shallots for 5-10 minutes till soft.
Add in the leeks and garlic, turn up the heat and give a regular shake till the leeks start to soften.
Add your stock and sweet potatoes, bring to a simmer, cover and leave for roughly 10 minutes. You can check when its ready by squishing the sweet potatoes.
Blend the whole lot up in liquidiser or straight in the pot with an immersion blender. Season to taste
Serve up into bowls, swirl in some cream, or olive oil, or coconut milk and add a fresh crack of black pepper.
We enjoyed ours with home baked seeded sour dough bread. Hope you enjoy yours too!
Home Galley 