Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Potato Leek Soup

Posted September 27, 2010
Find more about potatoes , soup , leeks
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This is as simple and satisfying a meal as I can imagine.

Humble ingredients.

Which get prepped simply.

And then cooked together in a pot. Which I forgot to take a picture of, which is why I'm mentioning it here.

Garnish.

Dinner.

That crazy Ben!

Before. . .

. . . and after.

I think that it's important, when you're expecting a baby, to think in terms of the stories you will tell your kids about their birth. Not, "I bent over so Daddy could look at my hemorrhoids and then, whoosh, my water broke!" or "I was watching a youtube video of a cat bumping into walls with a tissue box stuck on his head. . ." But, "We were picking flowers in a meadow and humming Vivaldi's Four Seasons when I felt the first contraction." I like to tell Ben about how Michael and I walked the beach in Santa Cruz, watching the waves gather and crash in the moonlight, a million stars winking overhead like a million knowing eyes. "One hour before they were going to induce me," I always tell him, "I went into labor. You said, 'Okay, okay, I'm coming on my own, don't rush me.'" It is so like the way Ben is now that it makes me laugh, and then cry a little, to think of him wedged in there all cozy and stubborn and then finally mustering the energy to do something before somebody made him.

My own mom has always told the story about how she ate a bowl of cream of cauliflower soup the night I was born, and I have always loved it. And so, this past week of Anni's due date, I have thought a great deal about what I was feeding her every night. (If you missed part of the summer: we have a friend living with us now who is--er, was--pregnant.) The truth is that I did not make her the last meal she ate before she went into labor, and given the fact that she projectile vomited it out her nose during an especially strong contraction, I am not sorry about this fact. The last meal I made her was actually saag paneer--that insanely delicious creamy-spiced Indian dish of spinach and fresh cheese (though I used tofu instead, a la the recipe in this book). But the night before that, I made Potato Leek Soup, and it was so insanely good that we were sure she would have her baby immediately, from the sheer deliciousness of it, even though we had planned to go to Joe's Pizza, where the eggplant parmesan has legendary water-breaking properties.

I served the soup with these biscuits, and we were so perfectly satisfied that we sat at the table reminiscing about dinner even before the plates were cleared. "Wasn't that so good?" "Oh my God, I know. That was so good."

Did you want to hear more about the soup? No? You wanted to hear about the baby? Oh! The baby. Frankie. He is--no offense to you or me with our own supremely beautiful babies--the most beautiful baby who ever lived, and his birth was what you might call, if you weren't raised in New York City by atheists, a blessed event. Anni was like the love child of Botticelli's Madonna and the Dalai Lama, assuming their love child turned out to be Rocky Balboa. She was all peace and grace and focus and monstrous strength, and I was filled with awe. Also, at different moments, I was filled with an embarrassing urge to faint. I did not faint, but I did once have to pass along the leg I was holding so that I could sit down for 35 seconds. 35 seconds, I swear, even though the tough-guy nurse (the same one who later called minute-old Frankie "pal" when she was diapering him) would not let me forget it. "I don't want to have to do paperwork on you," she scolded, even as the baby was crowning, and I laughed. (After I told her this story later, along with various details about the barfing, our friend Liz said, "I'm really hearing how heroic you were, Catherine!" which also made me laugh.)

And now we've got this Frankie of the small nose and baby-dinosaur grunting, of the scritchy-scratchy fingernails and the fierce-but-comically-quiet indignant crying, of the knit cap and the bellybutton stump and the blue eyes that look and scan and roll around like a wild horse's until they find the face of his beautiful mama, where they can rest.

Potato Leek Soup
Serves 4
Active time: 20 minutes; total time: 50 minutes

This soup is so simple and so good, there's not even that much to add here in the introductory note, though I will mention that I usually use boxed chicken broth but instead made it this time with vegetarian bouillon (I had to type that, like, 5 times to get the spelling right) on account of Anni being a vegetarian. I love, love, love this particular type of this brand--more than any of the boxed broth you can buy. You could, though, use plain water and up the salt a bit to compensate.

3 tablespoons butter
3 leeks, white and light-to-medium green parts, halved lengthwise, sliced into thin half moons, and washed well in a colander
1 1/2 pounds potatoes (ideally Yukon golds), peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
Kosher salt
4 cups broth, water, or a mix of broth and water
1/2 cup milk
Chives for garnish (optional, of course)

Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium-low heat, add the leeks, and stir them as they begin to cook. Ideally they'll have some water still clinging to them: they'll kind of steam and sauté simultaneously, and you can cover the pot to let them get tender (around 10 minutes), stirring occasionally while you prep the potatoes. Now add the potatoes, the broth or water, and some amount of salt (depending on how salty the broth is). Bring the coup to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for half an hour until the potatoes are very tender.

Puree some or all of the soup, using an immersion blender or a regular blender (I use an immersion blender and puree about half of it, since I like to leave some chunks of potato). Stir in the milk and taste the soup for salt: given its great simplicity, it is really important that this soup has enough salt; if it tastes like it's missing something, it is, and what it's missing is more salt. Garnish with chives (if you like) and serve.

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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