Potato Leek Soup

Even though I now live in a place where it doesn't really turn that cold in the fall/winter, my psyche still craves soup this time of year.  I've always enjoyed ordering potato leek soup at restaurants so when I came across Ina Garten's (aka The Barefoot Contessa) roasted potato leek soup recipe, I figured it was worth a try because vegetables taste better roasted.

I didn't have enough chicken stock (not broth, stock) on hand to make an entire recipe (plus, I'm not feeding a family of 10) so I halved the recipe.  One tip when working with leeks, make sure that you thoroughly clean them of all the dirt/sand, otherwise your soup will end up gritty.  The easiest way I've found to clean leaks is to cut the dark green stalk off (it's too tough to eat anyway) and then cut from the white end to the green end lengthwise.  Then roll the stock a half turn and make another cut lengthwise.  When you're done, you should end up with a small part of the white stalk that isn't cut and then 4 even portions of the stock sort of splaying out from there, like this:

This way, when you run the stalk under water, you can spread out the four portions and really get in between the layers.

Here's the potatoes and leeks in the roasting pan:

The recipe calls for the use of a sheet pan but I didn't have one that would have been large enough to fit all the ingredients and so I used a roasting pan.  When I make this again, I will use a sheet pan because the roasting pan took longer to roast the vegetables and some of the thinner leek slices burned before the rest of the potatoes were done.  I'm guessing this is because the sides of the roasting pan are higher than a sheet pan, thereby preventing the air in the oven from circulating over the pan as easily as it would with a sheet pan.

Here are the roasted veggies with the white wine and chicken stock to deglaze the pan:

The recipe called for blending the vegetables in batches and then transferring them to a dutch oven to finish cooking.  However, since I don't have a blender and actually prefer to use my stick blender, I just dumped all the veggies and the juice into the dutch oven and blended them in the pot:

Here's a picture of the soup after adding the cream and creme fraiche:

I didn't have any shallots on hand so I skipped the steps to make crispy shallots.  I finished my bowl off with some grated parmesan:

And ate it with some crusty bread:

I will definitely make this soup again, using the sheet pan and cooking the white wine out a little more in the deglazing step since my soup had a strong taste of wine.  Still, this will go into my recipe box for the next time I'm craving a hearty soup when it's cold(er) outside.

Cuban food

I'm not quite sure how this happened but I've managed to go more than 30 years of my life without trying true Cuban cuisine.  I finally managed to solve that problem a few days ago when I ate dinner at La Bodeguita Del Medio.  The restaurant had been recommended to me by a friend and so when a few friends and I were looking for a new place to eat dinner, I suggested La Bodeguita.  It's a small restaurant serving authentic Cuban food with a great menu.  I love places that have a small menu because it makes it easy to pick something to eat and you know that every dish has to be good or it wouldn't make it onto the menu.  The group started with the empanadas, which were recommended by our waiter.  Here's a photo:

Our waiter also brought us some extra dipping sauces for our empanadas, my favorite sauce being a warm guava sauce with jalapenos. 

I ordered the Arroz Con Pollo for my main dish, which I've been dying to try since I saw the dish featured on a food special.  Here's a picture:

Although there were about 8 other dishes on the menu that I still want to try, I would absolutely order this dish again in a heartbeat.  The chicken was so tender that it fell off the bone and the tomato sauce it was coated in was amazing.  Add in the sweetness of the plaintains and the rice and each bite was perfectly balanced.

I finished off my meal with a blood orange sorbet which was ok, not spectacular.  Still, I'll be going back to this place very soon because I can't wait to explore some more Cuban dishes!