Garlicky Potato Soup with Parmesan Toasts

Snowy weekend days are perfect for a nice, hearty, steaming bowl of homemade soup.  Here's the soup I made this past weekend.  It's from Cook's Country magazine, is very easy and quick (about half an hour) and tastes great.

Garlicky Potato Soup with Parmesan Toasts
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
1/4 c Parmesan cheese, grated
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
Salt and pepper
1 (6-inch) piece baguette, cut into 8 sliced on bias
3 scallions, white parts minced, green parts sliced thin (keep them separate)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
3 c low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 c heavy cream
1 1/2 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2" pieces

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 475.  Combine Parmesan, 2 Tbsp butter and 1/2 tsp pepper in bowl.  Spread butter mixture on 1 side of baguette slices.  Place bread, buttered side up, on rimmed baking sheet and bake until golden brown, 6-8 min; set aside. 
2. Meanwhile, melt remaining 1 Tbsp butter in Dutch oven over medium heat.  Cook scallion whites until softened, about 2 min.  Add garlic and flour and cook until fragrant, about 1 min.  Stir in broth, cream and potatoes and bring to a boil.  Reduce to medium-low heat, cover, and cook until potatoes are tender, 10-12 min.
3. Working in batches, process soup in blender until smooth, 1-2 min.  Return soup to pot.  (I used an immersion blender to puree right in the pot.)  Season with salt and pepper to taste and sprinkle with scallion greens.  Serve with Parmesan toasts.

Soup it Up

There are some foods that are often easier to throw together than to follow a recipe to make.  We always have some sort of pizza crust on hand for when we want a very quick meal--throw whatever you have in the fridge on the crust, stick it in the oven and 9 minutes later, you have pizza.  OK, it's a little more involved than that, but not much.

Another food that can be done at the last minute is soup.  The problem is that there's a little more to a good soup than to throw stuff in some water and boil.  You have to have some guidance.  Once you have that guidance, things are very easy.

So thank you to food guru Mark Bittman for giving us this guidance in an article in The New York Times.  In it, spells out how to make 4 different kinds of vegetable soup with little special preparation, little time and using ingredients that most will have on hand.

Mark Bittmans' Creamy Soups (courtesy nytimes.com)

His 4 groups of veggie soups are: Creamy--pureed with some sort of dairy; Brothy--veg broth with quick-cooking ingredients added; Earthy--with beans added; and Hearty--veggies sauteed first to give a deeper flavor.

He gives 3 examples of each type of soup and you'll see how easy it is to use the same technicques for each kind and just switch the ingredients to create a completely new soup.  He promises that after working through these soups, you'll never need a veggie soup recipe again. 

So get going!  Soup it up!