Last night was one of those nights. I had a little time on my hands, and I made a recipe I've been looking forward to making with great anticipation. This recipe has been crying out to me to try it for years. Almost a decade.
Many years ago, my brother was assigned a project that was ubiquitous to middle school French classes in our county: to cook, from scratch, a French meal for Mother's day. This was his first foray into cooking anything more complicated than toast, and it was quite the evening. I believe he still has the burn marks on his hands. One of the recipes he made I would barely touch-- it looked like applesauce and tasted of nothing much. It was a potage, a traditional, warming French vegetable stew. I did not, at the time, see the point of all those vegetables without any meat for them, and I was wary of the chunky purée my brother had made out of it. I barely ate any of my brother's meal at all-- I proclaimed the steak grey and chewy, the snowy merengue dessert flavorless. My brother can't cook, I told myself haughtily. Our sibling rivalry was still in full swing.
A year later, my mother served up another vegetable stew for dinner. This was rich and nutty and complex. I think I actually closed my eyes in delight when I had my first spoonful.
"What kind of stew is this?" I asked her.
"It's potage de légumes. What your brother made last year."
I could hardly believe her. That soup I still remembered with loathing. This soup was excellent, and the texture was creamy-- perhaps because she knew how to work the blender a little better than my brother had at 13.
The memories of this second rendering of the potage stayed with me. Every so often I would come across the recipe in my mother's personal collection, written out in her neat, even handwriting on a 3 x 5 index card. To make it would be to connect with my roots-- je suis québécoise, and proud-- to connect, too, with the most refined of cooking traditions. I would be just a little closer to mastering the art of French cooking.
But over the years, life got in the way. We always have onions, carrots, and potatoes on hand, but none of the other vegetables the recipe calls for, not without a special trip to the store. Somehow, whenever I thought of making the recipe, there wasn't time to go and buy them. Our lack of turnips kept me stalling.
It happened again when I began living on my own. I go produce-shopping once a week at Haymarket, and so every trip I have to decide what kind and how many fruits and vegetables I can reasonably use within the next week. This tends to leave ingredients more "exotic" to my pantry out cold. Maybe I'll have time to use those turnips next week, I would think to myself.
But at last, I forced myself to acquire the leeks, the parsnips, the turnips-- then go back out and buy onions and potatoes, because I'd used up the last batch. And, when the time was right and my ingredients were assembled, at long last I made my Potage de Légumes. It's a simple yet flavorful recipe, and easy to make so long as you're not afraid of cleaning out your blender afterwards.
The potage was everything I remembered and more. A perfect, traditional French dish, wonderful for autumn evenings. I love everything about this dish. Even the color is such a lovely orange. It is treat for the eye as well as the tastebuds. And the empty tummy.
Potage de Légumes Worth Waiting For
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 large leek, white part only, sliced
4 cups chicken stock
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
1 medium turnip, peeled and diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 medium parsnip, diced
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp herbes de provence
Salt to taste
Melt butter in large saucepan. Add onion and leek and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until soft and translucent.
Add potato, turnip, carrots, parsnip, broth, thyme, herbes de provence, and salt. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
Transfer soup to a blender and purée in batches until smooth. (The best way to do this, if you are unexperienced with puréeing, is to ladle soup out of the pot and into the blender, getting an even ratio of vegetables to broth, and once blended, pour into serving bowls and move on to the next batch. It's not as scary as it sounds-- I puréed mine in two batches.)
If soup is too thick, add a little broth.
Makes six side servings.
