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.