Potatoes, Garlic Chives, and Poaching

Last week, we came back from the farm with a hearty bag of potatoes.  After an entertaining lesson from another volunteer in unearthing them with our toes and then digging up the many different varieties (red, white, purple) by hand, I couldn't stop dreaming of potato leek soup.  This autumnal and overcast day was the perfect opportunity for this delicious recipe.

This recipe (Jae Steele's from Get It Ripe) became a favorite in the colder months of last year; maybe it's because it's the first batch of this cooler season, but this soup is even more luscious than I remember, but I rather think it is the peak potatoes. Tonight's meal was also another great vehicle for the garlic chives from my garden.  To think, once upon a time, I couldn't understand the appeal of potato soup!

We also finally tasted the Butternut, Roasted Garlic, and Sage bread.  Let's just say it is a darn good thing that potato soup is so filling; otherwise, it would have been a "Loaf down!" evening for sure!

Again, the bread recipe was a modified version of the "Potato Bread" recipe in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. It makes two large loaves, also works as buns, and freezes/thaws beautifully. In addition to subbing 1 c. roasted butternut for the 1 c. potato she calls for, I added the leaves of one sprig of rosemary, eight fresh sage leaves, and 1 bulb of roasted garlic which I roughly mashed after squeezing out the cloves.  Love that you can see the flecks of butternut and garlic if you look carefully.  Oh...and though it may look like this bread rocks a rhombus lifestyle, please know that it simply got slanty due to our overly eager, and thus hasty, cutting and toasting!  Tomorrow, this bread will enfold Garlic and Sage Sausages (a testing recipe for Carla Kelly's upcoming Vegan Al Fresco cookbook) with Apple Jicama Chutney.  Eeeeeee!

In preparation for the sausage making, today's technique was poaching:

Carla's recipe called for "Poached Garlic," and while anything garlic has me at hello, I had only ever seen poaching happen on the Food Network (usual with something I wouldn't eat).  According to Cooking A to Z (a technique-oriented book I borrowed from one of my chef friends -- thanks, Ed!), to poach is "to cook food gently in liquid that is hot, but not quite boiling (...the surface of the liquid will show some movement, with small bubbles just starting to appear)." (450).  The book refers mainly to poaching animal products and most often in some kind of stock, but it is interesting to think of the many applications if all that is really required to poach is some heat, some liquid, and some large pieces of whatever you'd like to have participate in a flavor exchange with the liquid.  Hm...looks like some poaching-based infusions are in my future!  For today, however, I couldn't believe how easy the poached garlic was to do (with the added bonus of making the kitchen smell amazing! ). It is also a fantastic alternative to roasting garlic with the benefit of infused oil to use elsewhere in the same (or a later) meal.  Woohoo!

To paraphrase the late, but eternally great, Paul Harvey, "Now, I know the poaching story"... and so do you, if you didn't already!  Learning is so cool. :)