Potato and Roasted Garlic Soup

Before the food allergy apocalypse hit, I was a sucker for those huge 9 x 12 inch gorgeously photographed 200 page cookbooks that were always on sale for 5 or 6 bucks on the clearance tables at Borders (when it still existed) or Barnes & Noble. I have about six of them.  When Mary Kate and I were talking about what we should develop for the coming months, it fell to me to develop a soup from the Roasted Vegetable Stock that Mary Kate was going to post. I tend to use more beef and pork (no more chicken for me, sigh) in my every day “normal” cooking and most of my standard soups have a protein in them. So to get ideas, I went looking through my cookbook collection and found Best Ever Soups: Over 200 Brand New Recipies for Delicious Soups, Broths, Chowders, Bisques, Consommes on the shelf. I took it out and went for a spin through it. Now, about half of the recipes in the book are now off limits to me, but I can see a lot of room for modification and de-allergizing, which is a lesson in and of itself. I don’t have to look at the cookbooks as off limits because I can’t eat that stuff anymore, I can use them to get inspiration for my new way of eating. I can look at them as a way to say, “hey, I still want to eat something like that, how do you think I can tweek it?”

So using the recipe in the book and making a few minor tweeks, I give you a soup with potatoes, Mary Kate’s Roasted Vegetable Stock, and roasted garlic. Because how can that be bad? Other than roasting the garlic, the rest of the prep is relatively simple. This would make a good weeknight dinner if you threw the garlic in the oven while you read the mail, check your email and change into your pajamas (oh wait…does everyone else do that just after you walk in the door too?). Or it’d make a nice side or appetizer for a weekend dinner. I’m serving it with a mustard and maple syrup marinated pork loin and a green salad.

Potato and Roasted Garlic Soup

Serves 4

• 2 bulbs of garlic with the tops trimmed off, but unpeeled (or 1/2 cup of already roasted garlic that you may have on hand, see below)
• 1 Tablespoon of olive oil
• 4 large potatoes or 5 small to medium potatoes, peeled and diced
• 8 cups of Roasted Vegetable Stock (I’d avoid using the dill in the stock for this soup, but any of the other herbs should work fine)
• 1 small onion or one half of a large onion, peeled and diced
• salt and pepper to taste
• a dash or two of hot sauce (a Tabasco style hot sauce would be lovely)
• fresh parsley to garnish

Pre-heat your oven to 375°F. Trim the top of the garlic bulbs just so the tops of the cloves are showing.

Place the bulbs on a small roasting pan or sheet pan and drizzle the olive oil over the trimmed garlic bulbs.

Roast the garlic until for 45 minutes or until it’s soft in the center of the cloves. (Or if you want to make your life really easy, if you have some roasted garlic already prepared {here’s how to do it, takes an hour, do a bunch ahead of time and store it in a jar in your fridge or freeze it so you can use when you want it without the aggravation}, use half a cup and mash it up before adding to the soup.) Once your bulbs have roasted, take them out of the oven and set them aside to cool a bit.

Add your roasted vegetable stock and the peeled and diced onion to a large stock pot, and simmer on medium high.

Then peel and dice your potatoes.

Par-boil the potatoes in another pot in salted boiling water for 10 minutes.

While the potatoes are cooking, squeeze the cooked garlic out of the bulbs (I found it easiest to do it a couple of cloves at a time) into a prep bowl.

When all the cooked garlic has been separated from the bulbs, add the cooked garlic to your roasted vegetable stock, and stir it well.

Once your potatoes have finished cooking, drain them.

After draining, add them to the roasted vegetable stock. Simmer for 20 minutes and then season to taste with salt, pepper and hot sauce. Serve topped with a bit of parsley to make it look pretty, and enjoy!