Kira’s Potato Leek Soup

Guest Recipe by Kira

The potato leek part is my older daughter’s favorite soup, and we make that quite often, and she prefers it without any milk or cream. Both kids love the novelty of having the green star in the middle, and they actually eat the spinach (swirling it with the soup to dilute the taste). I think the spinach purée alone makes a pretty tasty dairy-free “creamed spinach” side dish, but since I am the only one in the family who likes creamed spinach, I don’t make it unless I am making the soup.

If you don’t have a kosher for Passover cookie cutter, use a cup.

Potato Leek Soup

(makes 10 servings)

Ingredients
3 leeks
5 tbsp olive oil
2 pounds white potatoes, chopped
2 qts water
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup cream or milk (optional)

Cooking equipment
Cutting knife
Colander
Spatula
Measuring cup
Measuring spoon
Large pot
Cookie cutter or small plastic cup with the bottom cut off
Blender (stick blender works nicely)

To make the plain potato leek soup:
1. Discard tough part of green tops of leeks, then wash bottoms thoroughly
2. Cut leeks into thin slices and rinse in colander.
3. Cook in olive oil until leeks are soft – about 5 minutes.
4. Add potatoes and water and bring to a boil.
5. Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until potatoes are soft.
6. Puree with a blender.

Add salt and pepper to taste. For a creamier variation, add ½ cup of cream or milk

Spinach Purée

1. Blanch 1 lb of baby spinach (Put in small colander and submerge briefly into boiling water until barely cooked. Then transfer to bowl of ice water.)
2. Drain spinach.
3. Puree with ¼ of batch of potato leek soup.

Assemble final soup by placing the cookie cutter in the bottom of a soup bowl. Spoon spinach puree into the cookie cutter to desired depth. Pour potato leek soup around cookie cutter to the same depth. Then remove cookie cutter and repeat in another bowl.

For more kosher for Passover recipes, visit:

• Pesach Recipes – a list compiled in 2009 by Leora
• Kosher for Passover – Meat and Fish by Ilana-Davita

Review with Starlings

On My Blog

I haven’t written a review in a while, so these images and links are from the past three weeks.

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• Westbankmama has a round up of posts for Israel Pride Week. See also Let’s Have a Real Apartheid Education Week by Alan Dershowitz.
• This article on peanut allergies inspired a lot of discussion on Facebook. Why are there so many peanut allergies among Americans and Brits and so few among native-born Israelis? The article only answers why so few among native-born Israelis (early exposure to peanuts). But the explosion of allergies elsewhere in the past ten years is still unanswered.
• One day I will make Ilana-Davita’s butternut squash soup.
• Risa writes the History of Rehovot.
• Jew Wishes reports a new Aharon Appelfeld book (one of my favorite authors).
• On my business blog, I wrote Ease of a Facebook Fan Page.
• Enjoy the new header I created for Cooking Manager. And learn to bake challah.

Upcoming next week: Potato Leek Soup by a friend (recipe suitable for Pesach)

Mosaic Wall in Sepia

You can see a full color version of this mosaic wall at Raritan Valley Community College in this post. To put this in sepia, I copied the original photo to a new layer in Photoshop, desaturated the photo, added yellow and red to get sepia, and then set the opacity of the sepia layer to 90% so just a wee bit of color would show through. I wanted to use the sepia effect to emphasize the textures of the mosaic.

For more sepia photos, visit Sepia Scenes:

Nature Notes: Cardinal Watercolor

You can see the drawing of the cardinal on last week’s post. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take out the paints.

On a related note, it is a custom to feed the birds the week of Parshat B’Shalach. Of course, the birds might want to be fed other weeks as well. Cardinals like sunflower seeds.

Masquerade Ballet in Sepia

This was my favorite dance at my daughter’s ballet recital (not counting the ballet, tap and jazz dances she performed, of course). It seemed like a fitting ballet for this time of year; on Sunday Jews around the world celebrate the holiday of Purim, and dressing up in costume is part of the tradition.

For more photos in sepia, visit Sepia Scenes: