Leek and Stilton Soup Session
After a busy morning of meetings, it came as quite the surprise when I finally made it to my desk to be greeted by an extraordinarily large leek. Quite a beauty. Award winning if I may.
I laughed, immediately guessing the connection to the Welsh symbolic vegetable, and the fact that other than today being a gloriously sunny ‘Spring-is-nearly-here’ day, it is also March the 1st, St David (the patron saint of Wales)’s Day.
After traipsing my giant leek around the shops after work, I made it home and decided something needed to be done about this fattened up treat and opted for a heartwarming home favourite, leek and stilton soup. Yes, cheese always seems to feature somewhere, slight infatuation.
I headed off to our supermarket with my ingredients list (to serve six):
- 8 leeks (washed, trimmed and finely chopped in a food processor) – NB. I had 6 plus my giant
- 2 sticks of celery (chopped)
- 50g/2oz butter – I went for Sainsbury’s finest – naughty.
- 1 tbsp light olive oil
- 1 large baking potato (peeled and diced)
- 3 pts vegetable stock
- ¼ pt/150ml single cream – on offer tonight to 9p. Get in.
- 8oz/225g stilton (crumbled)
- Sea salt and ground black pepper
When I got back I was lucky enough to have an eager kitchen assistant Kate, who helped me clear some space and get our tunes on. We laid out our ingredients in true ‘ready steady cook’ style, and began with the leeks. We chopped the root end off and sliced the top of the body before the leafing, and diced the leek into bits. After doing all 8 (7 in my case) we threw them into a bowl and hand processed them. Boy did we cry. Apparently leeks are onions. Really bad ones. I suggest you make this with your own Kate, so you can take it in turns to cry, eat crisps and dip and then swop and process. Also take your makeup off, for your eyeliner WILL run.
We then threw the deliciously naughty butter and olive oil into a deep pan, before slopping in the shredded leek. This simply sweated over the hob (with our makeshift cover) for 5 minutes before we added the stock and finely diced potatoes.
We have since left it simmering for 30 minutes while I type this and we munch on nachos and flavoured dips.. perks of a drawn-out process.
Returning to the hob and the aroma filling downstairs is brilliant. Literally our whole house smells of leeks. Happy St David’s Day all. For our final touches we simply added the crumbled stilton, trying not to steal any, with the cream to the stewed slop. We split the mixture and processed it one final time before sneaking a spoonful. No word of lie it’s divine. Rich and creamy. But by no means healthy.
Thank you Trish for such an amazing leek.
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus.
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