Steemit Iron Chef 2018 Act 01 Round 07 : Potato-Leek Soup - rustic, hearty, vegan

I'm finally getting a second entry in for the week! Two days ago, I made leek pakora. When it was announced that this week's theme ingredient was leeks, the first thing I though of was a creamy potato-leek soup. I mean, it's a no-brainer, right? And that's partly why I went with the pakora instead. But I had leeks leftover, and I do love soup. So how can I distinguish a leek soup from the norm? By not blending half of it...

I was thinking about this vision of a rustic leek soup and what would go along well. I decided to embellish it with chunks of vegan sausage and rough-cut croutons of pumpernickel. So I gathered my stuff:

I made the vegetable stock two days ago in anticipation of this meal. I wanted a good chunk of leftovers after feeding three of us, so I used about seven cups of stock, three leeks (cut lengthwise and then into relatively large chunks), two carrots (peeled and thick-sliced), 1.5 lbs of tiny potatoes (the smallest few left whole, otherwise cut down to an inch or so), some garlic, salt and oil.

You start a soup like this by sweating the leeks and garlic in oil. I'd normally use butter, but since I was using vegan sausage, I decided to make the whole dish vegan. So I used olive oil and sesame oil in about a 3:1 ratio. Once the leeks were limp, I added the carrots and potato, stirred it up.

After a minute or two, I poured in the stock and some salt and brought it up to the boil. The potatoes took a little over ten minutes of simmering to soften up. While that was happening, I fried the sausage in a skillet with some peanut oil:

After letting the sausage sit on a paper towel for a few minutes, I added it to the soup at the very end of the cooking, turned off the heat, gave it a stir and let it sit for a few more minutes. At that point it was ready. I served it in bowls and topped it with croutons of pumpernickel bread in olive oil and smoked paprika.

It was a great soup. But bear in mind the stock I used was already seasoned and quite peppery. So if you were using canned stock, you'd want to season the final soup more than I needed to.