Just Potato Soup

Contrary to prevailing wisdom in the culinary world, my favorite food season is winter.  Sure, I love the palette of flavors and colors spring and summer bring...some of my best food memories are associated with cooking outside and eating fresh berries...but I look forward to the rich, wholesome dishes of the colder months.  Stews, soups, braises, smoking and preserving excites me the most.  Perhaps this is because I tend to lean towards the more technical aspects of cooking. I believe firmly that these dishes seem to separate the decent cooks from the true technicians..the ones who have taken the time to study the science and reasoning behind every step in a proper dish. 

Every Christmase Eve I make a pot of 'something'.  A dish that holds well, pleases the masses and is generally easy to eat whenever you are hungry.  This past Christmas Eve, I made a slightly more complex version of basic potato soup.  As far as flavors go, there was nothing really out of the ordinary with the soup however, with just a little more effort with the presentation, guests will think you mastered some sort of new culinary level. 

I have been thinking about making potato soup for a few days but I didnt really want to make a roux based cream soup that continues to thicken as time passes.  While this recipe has no flour, I did use a bit of butter (only 1/2 stick though!) as I generally like to sweat my aromatics slowly in whole butter.

If you were serving this at a restaurant I would call this recipe Puree of Yukon Potato Soup with Crispy Fingerlings and Applewood Smoked Bacon...at home, its just potato soup.

• 3/4 small onion, diced
• 3 stalks celery, diced 
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1/2 stick butter
• 8 medium yukon potatoes, peeled and cut into consistent sizes
• 7 cups clear chicken stock, if you make it yourself, dont roast the bones
• 5 cups heavy cream
• 8 ounces thick sliced smoked bacon, buy good bacon
• 6 or 8 yellow or red skinned fingerling potatoes
• Kosher Salt and Black Pepper

When dicing onions and celery, always cut them consistently in size.  This will allow the vegetables to cook most evenly.  Peel and wash the potatoes.  Cut them into consistently sized matchsticks for the same reason.  This soup will be pureed so it doesnt matter the exact shape but same size is important.
                                                                                                                                                    

Add the onion, celery and butter into a soup pot.  Gently sweat the items until just translucent, never browning the onions or celery.  Add the garlic and toss until the sharpness of the garlic disapates.  Add the Potatoes and broth.  Simmer until the potatoes are tender but not totally falling apart.

Meanwhile, slice the smoked bacon into lardons.  I like my bacon to still have some bite to it so I tend to slice it a little thicker than most people.  Add the bacon a cold saute pan and render the bacon slivers over medium heat until the bacon is completely rendered and the bacon is cooked to your liking.

Drain the bacon on a paper towel, reserving the rendered fat in the pan.  Slice the fingerling potatoes as thin as possible.  Heat the reserved bacon fat until just below smoking and add the thin sliced fingerlings.  Fry these until crispy, draining on a paper towel.  Reserve both the crispy bacon and the potatoes for garnish.  Reserve the bacon fat for garnish too!

   

Puree the simmered potatoes, vegetables and broth in a blender until completely smooth.  Return the puree to the soup pot and add the heavy cream.  Stir to completely combine and simmer for 20 minutes or so...adjusting consistency with more broth or more cooking.

When the soup is hot and the correct consistency, season with salt and fresh ground pepper.  Garnish with a few of the reserved potato crisps, the crispy bacon and some drops of the reserved baon fat.

Cassoulet

Cooking primarily in larger professional kitchens has translated to, ahem...slightly larger recipes than most hom chefs can handle.  This recipe for cassoulet, using the Duck Confit from a previous recipe post, is just such a recipe.  While this recipe makes for a fair amount of cassoulet and would be suitable for a crowd, it is also easy to reduce the recipe by half or even thirds.

• 3 sprigs of thyme
• 15lb ham hocks
• 3 onions
• 1 head of celery
• 4 medium sized carrots
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 3lb white beans, some people like cranberry beans, cooked in pork stock or white beef stock
• 12 duck confit legs, removed of some of the fat that has congealed on the outside
• 2 1/2lb of pork sausage links, blanched and browned
• 2 onions
• 1/4 cup raw garlic cloves

Using the first 6 ingredients, make a quick pork stock.  Reserve the meat from 4 hocks for use later in the recipe.  Line a large roasting pan with 1 inch of the cooked beans.  Arrange the 12 duck legs, sausage (cut in half lenthwise) and the pork hock meat over the beans.  Using a blender, puree the 2 remaining onions and the remaining garlic.  Place this puree over the beans and meat.  Top this mixture with the remaining beans and add the quick pork stock to just cover the beans.

Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes.  Reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees and cook for an additional 3 hours, pressing beans down gently every 15 or 20 minutes during the cooking.  Portion the cassoulet into some cool earthenware serving dishes and garnish with chopped fresh herbs. 

 

Duck Confit

Confit, or a variation of, has been a method of preparation and preserving of foods for thousands of years.  Usually associated with the preservation of a meat...traditionally a waterfowl, the process of transforming a perfectly acceptable cut of meat into something totally different is incredibly satisfying.  The end result to a properly prepared duck confit is much much better than the sum of its parts with a silky texture and aroma like no other.   I love the actual act of preparing confit...everything from feeling the heavily textured salt mixture on my hands to incessently checking on the product as it slowly cooks...it all excites me.

I'm not sure where the inspiration of this recipe for duck confit originated.  I may have swiped it verbatim from a long lost chef-partner some time ago (if I did...THANKS), I really dont know.  However, this recipe has served me well over the years.  Once you get the actual procedure down, feel free to amend the aromatics, in this case the juniper, peppercorns and thyme, to fit your own desires

For the Confit Cure

• 1/2 cup each of black peppercorns, juniper berries and fresh thyme
• 1/4 dried rubbed sage
• 1/4 cup of fresh rosemary sprigs
• 1/2 cup garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup dried bay leaves
• 3 cups kosher salt....whenever I say salt, I mean kosher

Combine all the ingredients in a large food processor and pulse until roughly chopped.  This may make more than you need for a batch of confit, depending on how many duck legs you wish to prepare

For the Actual Confit

•  duck legs, this cure should be enough for a dozen or so
• extra duck fat...surely you have some frozen in tidy little bricks right OR just have a half gallon or so of vegetable oil to get yourself started.

Wash and dry the duck legs thouroughly.  Its good to get as much as the extra water off them as possible so your confit cure will work best.  Dry curing removes moisture from the product so there is no use in having extra moisture.  Toss the legs in a copious amount of the cure...go ahead and use it all...doesnt really matter.  Place the legs in a large container and place in refrigerator 24-36 hours.

After the curing process, rinse the cure from the legs in plenty of cool water.  Place the legs, skin side down in a large roasting pan.  Make sure your roasting pan is plenty big enough.  You will have a lot of hot oil.  Add enough of the oil (or duck fat) to almost cover the legs and place in a slow, 275 degree, oven.   roast the confit until the fat is completely rendered from the legs and the meat is falling off the bone.  Remove from heat and cool completely, undisturbed, in the oil-fat mixture that was created.  This will keep for quite a while but I have never kept it more than a week or so.  Reserve the fat for the next batch.

Whenever you wish for some confit, remove however many legs you need and heat in a high oven, crisp the skin in a pan or pull the meat and use in recipes.  Either way, its good.