Passport & Plate - Nanny Brigid's Potato + Leek Soup
Ireland | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 1 photos
Ingredients
25g butter
2 leeks
2 potatoes
2 garlic cloves
750ml good quality vegetable stock
Salt
Pepper
To serve
A handful of finely grated gruyère cheese
Roughly chopped walnuts
Good, crusty bread
How to prepare this recipe1. Trim the leeks and then split them in half lengthways. Now slice them quite finely before washing them really well in a colander. Top tip: it’s easier to wash leeks thoroughly when they’re already sliced.
2. Heat butter in your soup pot (a good heavy-based saucepan will do) over a medium heat. Gently fry the leeks for 10 minutes or until they start to soften.
3. Meanwhile, peel and roughly chop the potatoes and garlic cloves. Add to the leeks and gently fry for another 5 minutes.
4. Cover with stock and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the spuds are nice and soft. Remove from the heat and use a hand-held blender to blitz the soup. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
5. Serve piping hot with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts and grated gruyère. Oh, and some crusty bread on the side.
The story behind this recipeWhen I was three years old, my family moved from Ireland to Saudi Arabia where we lived happily for the next ten years. Every summer, we would travel back to Ireland to visit my grandmothers who lived on the border of the North and South of Ireland.
Throughout the year, we would dream about our Nanny Brigid’s spuds. My siblings and I would hang out of our bunk beds talking wistfully about the fluffiness of those Irish potatoes. We must have been among the few Irish kids in the world who wished we could eat potatoes every day.
Whenever I make my potato and leek soup, I think of Nanny Brigid’s hearth and its aga. I think of how it offered such consistent culinary comfort to the extended members of my family. Day in, day out, for years.
I wish I could cook for her now. I wish I could tell her what a huge influence she has been on my approach to food. She died when she was 92, a year after I started writing recipes for a national newspaper in Ireland. She was so proud of telling the postman about my column when he brought her the newspaper each week.
I don’t think Nanny Brigid would have been too impressed with my extravagant addition of gruyère and roughly chopped walnuts to her traditional leek and potato soup recipe. Or garlic, for that matter. But she always indulged my creative spark and I think she would recognise that spark in this recipe.
I like to serve this soup in the small, china bowls I inherited from my Nanny Brigid. Those bowls are the ones you’ll see in this recipe’s accompanying photo.
