Vichysoisse - planet friendly summery leek soup
This is a wonderful recipe for leftover trimmings. A delicious, rich and modern variant of the classic soup based on potato and leek with the taste of black truffle. The recipe is planet friendly. Instead of a lot of milk and butter, we use almond milk and plantbased butter. The knob of butter for taste is a 90% reduction compared to the original recipe. For a recent truffle workshop with master chef students we made an espuma (foam) of it. You can just serve it as a soup if you don't have a kidde. It also saves you from having to sieve the soup.
Decorated with rucola flowers.
Ingrediënts for four people
200 gram peeled potatoes
200 gram leeks in rings (preferably the green that you otherwise throw away)
1 clove garlic
0,3 litre vegetable stock
0,3 litre almond milk
10 gram black truffle or truffle carpaccio (optional)
100 gr plant- based butter (for instance violablok)
20 gr butter (for vegan replace with plant-based)
pinch quatre epice (nutmeg and black pepper is an alternative)
Salt
Chives or other herbs for decoration
Method
Sweat in a large, heavy bottom pot the leeks for 5 minutes in the butter. Don’t add any colour. Add garlic and potatoes and cook for a minute or two, stirring a few times. Stir in the broth and bring to a boil.
Then move to low heat, gently simmering for 35 minutes, or until the leeks and potatoes are very soft. Allow to cool for a few minutes. Use hand blender to cream. Add the cold vegetable butter in small cubes to make a nice emulsion. Soup can splash, be careful.
Return soup to the cooking pot and whisk in almond milk and quatre epices. Season with salt and pepper. Return to a boil, reduce to simmer and cook 5 minutes. If you want to thin soup out, add more broth, if needed. Cool down the soup and serve with a generous serving of olive oil, seasalt and truffle. Dried fried onions are also an alternative.
If you want to make an espuma, sieve the soup and put into a ‘kidde’.
We made the Vichyssoise with the ‘waste’ after making these slowcooker leeks with hazelnut and truffle dressing. Recipe in Dutch here.