Mary's Potato and Cheese Soup

4/27/11:  Potato and Cheese Soup

My recipe searching usually ventures down one of three roads: internet, magazine, or cookbook. AllRecipes.com, sure. TastyKitchen.com, been there. Cook's Country magazine, yep. And we mustn't forget our dear Betty Crocker cookbook.

So where did the Potato and Cheese Soup recipe come from? I am happy to report that it didn't come via the sources above. It came from Mary H. from California (the Quilting Bibliophagist), who is my sewing/quilting buddy. Whenever either of us have a sewing or quilting related question, we email each other for advice. One of my emails strayed off into the realm of cooking and I asked her if she had any good, easy, and quick recipes she could share. And that is how the Potato and Cheese Soup was found! Here it is:

Potato Cheese Soup

• 8 cups of peeled and sliced potatoes 
• 4 cups water
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 10 sprigs parsley
• 3 cups milk
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 2 to 4 tablespoons butter or margarine 
• 1/4 teaspoons pepper (or to taste)
• 2 pinches of garlic powder

Cook the potatoes in the water with the salt until tender. While the potatoes cook, saute the onions in the oil until soft. (I use a nonstick frying pan. If you're using a regular pan, you might have to use a little more oil.) When the potatoes are done, puree the potatoes, onion, and parsley in a blender. If you wish, you may leave some of the cooked potatoes un-pureed.

Be careful. Do not fill the blender more than half full at a time. You must also use a blender which has a glass container, not a plastic one, to puree the hot soup. If you run out of cooking water while pureeing your batches of soup, just add a little of the pre-measured milk. If you do not have a blender, you will need to chop the onions instead of just slicing them, and you will need to finely chop the parsley and either mash the potatoes or run them through a food mill. This all takes more time which is why I love using the blender.

Return the potato puree to the pot. Add milk, pepper, garlic powder, and butter. Stir. Add cheese. Heat and stir over a very low flame just until the cheese melts. Caution: High heat will cause the cheese to become a rubbery mass. Check the seasonings and adjust if necessary. (A thick pan is ideal for soups like this. I have a soup pot that is made of porcelain covered cast iron which I love. It's also great for rice or beans.)

If you need to prepare this soup very quickly, wash your parsley and slice your onions the night before and store them in the refrigerator in a tightly-covered container or zip lock bag. Peel and slice your potatoes and store them in the 'fridge covered with the water so they don't turn grey.

I like to serve this with cornbread or whole wheat Irish Soda Bread. Or just regular whole wheat bread. Adding a salad to the meal makes a little more well rounded nutritionally, though my husband was perfectly happy just with soup and bread. And potatoes are very nutritious anyway. Serves 5-7.

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I tried to stay true the recipe as well as I could. The only thing I changed was using dried parsley instead of fresh. So this is how the kitchen time unfolded:

I cleaned the potatoes:

Peeled them:

Measured the amount of potatoes by using my large, 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup. No home should be without it. :)

Placed the potatoes into our 6 quart pot. (Oh, by the way, I doubled the recipe. That's the reason for all the potatoes! I had freezing leftovers in mind.)

While the potatoes were coming to a boil, I sliced the onions thin:

Pureed everything together and then added the milk, cheese, and seasonings:

The end result was a creamy, flavorful bowl of soup that everyone loved--even the soup haters. Yay!

And because bread and soup is like Astaire and Rogers, I made some biscuits using my tried and true recipe.

Even though I made this soup way back in April, I wanted to say a thank you to Mary for sharing this recipe with me. I will be making more once our new red potatoes are ready to harvest, which is not too far from now come to think of it. There is only a few weeks between the time our potatoes from the previous year are spent and the time we harvest the new crop. But how long those weeks seem!


What about you? What is your favorite potato recipe of all time? How about soup? Send some recipes to me at herlittleway at gmail dot com.

Everything But the Kitchen Sink -- Creamy Chicken Pot Pie

5/2/10: Creamy Chicken Pot Pie

Meal details: I made a casserole that had traditional pot pie flavors, such as carrots, broccoli, potatoes, and chicken. And the casserole was topped with a biscuit layer, something like a cobbler.

Defining moments: First time using potatoes, carrots, broccoli, peas, and parsnips in one dish. Wow! What a line up of ingredients, huh?

Recipe sources: I was having an incredibly hard time choosing what to make this week. I wanted to select a Robert Irvine recipe (in order to continue with the FNCCC), but nothing jumped out at me and I was running out of time. So Annemarie gave me her recipe binder to browse through. Her binder is not your typical recipe book, it is huge and has the thickness of an encyclopedia set. :D Within five minutes, I found the recipe I wanted. It was a pot pie recipe from Sam's Club and here it is for those who are interested. . .

Creamy Chicken Pot Pie

Prep. 10 min. Total 40 min. Makes 8 servings Cost per serving = $0.90

What you need

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, cubed
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 lb. cooked Tyson boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed (about 3 cups)
16 oz. frozen mixed vegetables, thawed
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose baking mix

Make it

Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Cook cream cheese and broth in large saucepan on low heat until cream cheese is completely melted and mixture is well blended, stirring frequently with whisk. Stir in chicken, vegetables and garlic salt.
Spoon into 9-inch pie plate. Beat egg and milk in medium bowl with whisk until well blended; stir in baking mix just until moistened. Spoon over chicken mixture. Place pie plate on baking sheet.
Bake 25 to 30 min. or until golden brown.

What I learned: One thing stands out clear to me and it's this: I need to parboil (precook) all vegetables. I parboiled all my vegetables except for the carrots and they didn't cook all the way through when in the oven; they were still firm in areas. I should either precook the carrots or really dice them.

Any modifications? Yes. Instead of using a pie plate, I used our 6 quart casserole dish and a smaller dish for three times the recipe. It is a whole lot easier than trying to maneuver three pie plates in the oven!
And instead of purchasing a bag of frozen vegetables from the store, I used veggies from the previous farming season. They're considered free now, so why not? The parsnips and carrots were kept in a makeshift root cellar (a long box of sand) and I was very happy to see that they were nice and crisp!

How it tasted? When I first chose this recipe I thought, "It looks simple, we have all the ingredients. . . So why not?" Yeah, I wasn't overly enthused about it to tell you the truth! So you can understand why I was amazed by all the good feedback I got from the family. Everyone didn't just like it, they loved it. :D

How about a 2nd time? Definitely!

M'm! M'm!. . . Homemade!

2/22/09: Chicken, Corn, and Potato Chowder and St. Joseph's Day Bread

• Sources: Recipelink.com for chowder and March 2009 issue of Saint Maria's Messenger magazine.

• Defining moments: First time I ever made soup from scratch. (If I was talking canned soup this would probably be my 100th time.)

• What I learned: I learned that you should never have soup without bread accompanying it! I also discovered that the second time you do a recipe everything seems to flow so nicely. I had zero trouble with the St. Joseph's Day bread this time.

• How it tasted: It was the best chicken soup I ever tried and my brothers really liked it as well. My sisters looked more fondly at the bread than the soup, which I don't mind in the least!

• How about a 2nd time? The bread, definitely. The soup. . .If I could have it my way I would have this soup, cabbage soup, and split pea soup every month! These three are my favorites. And split pea soup may be coming soon, the ham bone is waiting patiently in the freezer as I speak.

First Batch

I will begin my journal with my first Sunday, November 30, 2008:

11/30/08: Had Chicken Argentina and Potato Parmesan.

• Sources: Former was from "Best Recipes From the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars" by Ceil Dyer and the latter was from "The Woman's Day Cookbook"

• Defining moments: First time working with completely defrosted chicken. I so much rather use partially frozen! And this would be my first time making homemade mashed potatoes, only used boxed version before.

• What I learned: Meat can take a lot longer than what the recipe says, I ended up being 30 min. late.

• How it tasted: Flavors were very bright for the Chicken Argentina because I used lime juice and olives. The potato dish was very good because I added a layer of Parmesan on top so it was nice and crispy when finished.

• How about a 2nd time? I am definite about Potato Parmesan but I don't think the chicken recipe will be repeated.