Souper Tuesday: Leek & Potato Soup — and all your soup requests

We had a load of lovely ideas for soup recipes from TGIFood Souper Tuesday fans, when we asked you to send in your requests for our weekly Super Tuesday slot. From classics such as Caldo Verde and borscht to many requests for Moroccan soup recipes, and calls for chicken soups as well.

Talking of chicken (broadly), one request was for Italian Wedding Soup. It may seem obvious that this is consumed at Italian weddings, but this is not the derivation of its name. The English (American) name is a mistranslation of minestra maritata, which means “married soup”. It’s a reference to the key ingredients of green vegetables and meat being married together in the soup. It means wedded broths, not people.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Your weekly winter soup recipes start here

“The marriage of its meats and vegetables inside of its broth is the only matrimony relevant in this context,” says Wikipedia.

Italian Wedding Soup is a clear chicken-based broth containing green vegetables such as endive, cabbage and spinach, and meat such as sausage or meatballs.

Reader Jenny Dean put her hand up for “my Granny’s simple chicken soup for when one is ill. Organic chicken, carrot, onion and celery boiled to almost nothing, to nurture a flu-ridden body.”

Helena Smith’s favourites were chicken soup and hearty vegetable soup (dik groentesop): “I would love to see your versions of the two.” One call was for Caldo Verde, the Portuguese soup of cabbage and potatoes with olive oil, onion and garlic. Lyn Scheibe wrote: “I love Caldo Verde and I use cabbage, but the real Portuguese guys in the east of Joburg use a fiercely sliced dark variety and I wonder if they are using kale? Your input would be great; also a great recipe for you to share.” (East Joburg readers, please enlighten us.)

Kelly Duncan was precise, asking for a “Mexican flavoured chicken barley soup”, while an anonymous reader asked for “Mexican bean soup” and even sent in a recipe for it.

A host of readers wanted tomato soups, including roasted tomato and garlic soup (anonymous), and tomato and chilli soup (Renee de Boer).

Bev Furnell wrote: “Recently been given the best soup EVER… paprika and cream tomato soup. I eat it cold too. It's best with homemade bread.”

Tomato soup is most definitely coming up, most likely a lovely creamy tomato soup packed with flavour after roasting the tomatoes with garlic. And probably chilli. And paprika.

There were requests for Moroccan broths, with one anonymous reader asking for Moroccan lamb soup. “Woolies has a nice Moroccan lamb soup – would be awesome to have a recipe for something similar that we can make at home :).” Something along those lines will be coming to a tagine near me soon.

One reader, Marianne Schumacher, innocently suggested borscht, which we tend to associate with red beetroot and which The Foodie’s Wife refuses to eat. Marianne could not have known this. I dare not bring beetroot into the house although I sometimes hide them at the back of the crisper behind the carrots and leeks. I once snuck some into a vegetable bake along with carrots, baby potatoes and baby onions and courgettes and whatnot, and I would have got away with it, except that everything else in the oven pan turned pink. ? As did I.

But beetroot is not the hero of every borscht recipe. It can contain sorrel, cabbage, rye and other ingredients. However, I think most South Africans would have beetroot in mind for it, so let’s hope The Foodie’s Wife doesn’t spot the strange red vegetables in my socks drawer at some point soon.

One reader was worried that my soup recipes were all meaty. There had only been two at that stage, and yes, they were both very meaty. That won’t be a trend.

Josephine Allais wrote: “I have a vegetarian granddaughter and hope that Tony features meatless soup recipes as well, or that he suggests tangy substitutes for the meat.”

Fear not. There will be plenty of meatless soup recipes; we have already had spicy sweetcorn and coconut soup and today we have leek and potato, and much more will come soon. If ever a soup recipe contains an element that either a vegetarian or vegan wishes not to eat, please substitute any dairy with coconut cream or a non-dairy cream, oil or coconut cream for butter, and so on.

Other calls included for black bean and chorizo soup, green Thai curry soup, mulligatawny (the colonial Indian soup containing chicken, mutton and all sorts of other ingredients, often lentils and spices); and one reader suggested “wheat soup”, which I’m trying to get my head around.

Then there’s the “whatever I can find in my fridge” soup. Over to you for that one, but for now I’m putting my mind to that wheat soup. A quick Google search comes up with Moroccan “dchicha”. Let’s see where that goes. Keep coming back for more, but for now, here’s another favourite…

Tony’s Potato and Leek soup 

(Makes about 2 litres)

Ingredients

⅓ cup butter

2 large onions, chopped

4 leeks, sliced

4 large potatoes, diced

900 ml of chicken or vegetable stock

250 ml full cream milk

250 ml cream

Salt and white pepper

Garnish:

3 round slices of leek per serving

Deep-fried sliced potato peel strips

Chopped fresh garlic chives

Method

Slice the leeks and chop the onions. Peel the potatoes. Retain a handful of peelings to slice thinly and fry as a garnish.

Melt butter and sauté gently until softened.

Add the diced potatoes and sliced leeks and simmer, stirring.

Season and stir again.

Put a cartouche on top of the vegetables. This is a round of greaseproof paper cut to fit the pot.

Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Remove the cartouche and discard.

Add 900 ml of stock, bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

Cool the soup and then blend well. I use a handheld stick blender.

Or, blending soup in a food processor, return the soup to the pot.

Add the cream and milk.

Reheat to a simmer.

Meanwhile, slice the potato peels into slim strips. Heat oil in a pan and fry the peel slivers until crisp and golden; drain on kitchen paper.

Lightly fry three slices (rounds) of leek per serving.

Ladle the hot soup into bowls.

Garnish with the rounds of leeks and scatter the fried peel.

Finish with chopped garlic chives. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.



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