French Leek Soup and Lunch All Week

Let's say that any meal comprising solely of slow cooked onions, such as French Onion Soup, makes you an unpleasant person to be around a few hours later. Let's not say anything more than that. Let's say that you know this and you don't want to be that person, but the idea of lovely onion soup topped with toasted bread and a lot of melted cheese torments you. You get bitchy when other people casually mention eating or making it. Well, if this is you, I have something to share: Put cheesy toast on another kind of soup. It works! It will satisfy you! You won't be embarrassed to share a room/couch/bed for the following 24 hours.

This is what you do: Chop three leeks and soften them in a fair amount of butter. Like a lump and a half. I had 5 big white mushrooms, so I diced them into wee bits and threw them in. I also very thinly sliced two small potatoes and when the leeks were soft added them as well. I added a splash of vermouth (but white wine would have been good), a bay leaf and some dried thyme, and topped everything up with vegetable broth to simmer for an hour or so. Now this is a fair amount of time to simmer a soup like this, but that was a productive period. Because while the flavours were becoming fantastic, lunch for the week was being prepared.

We're into packed lunches around here for pretty much every reason going: better for us, better for the planet, better for our wallets, often more delicious. Of course making them is a pain. But I find that if I have various delicious things I can scoop into a container, I can still get out of the door in the morning. How come making a sandwich takes so long? Sandwich making definitely will make you late. Salads are key.

So I made the spread you see before you while the soup was maturing. There's an eggplant, pomegranate and pine nut salad in a garlic yogurt dressing, a tabbouleh of sorts with diced zucchini and pine nuts, a grated carrot, beet and celery salad with a honey mustard shallot dressing and some cooked sausages purchased from our lovely local butcher. All things that work together and all things that are even better cold. 

And although it looks like a lot of work, it's pretty simple. Here it is in Nine Simple Steps:

1. Prep your eggplant. Turn the oven on to 350/180. Cut two eggplants lengthwise and then score the flesh. Rub with oil and sprinkle with salt. Place them skin side up on a baking tray and roast them for 30-45 minutes. Until they look like this:

2. Dice half a large zucchini (or one whole small one if that's what you've got). Place the pieces in a bowl with about 1.5 cups of bulgur. Turn on the kettle. Cover the bulgur/zucchini with boiling water, put a lid on the bowl and let everything steep for a while. Just forget about it.

3. Toast a bunch of pine nuts.

4. De-seed half a pomegranate.

5. Mince three cloves of garlic. Your co-workers will really like this.

6. Remember those pine nuts! Don't let them burn!

5. In a mixing bowl combine 3/4 cup of plain yogurt, a glug of olive oil and one of those minced garlic cloves. Add the pomegranate seeds and pine nuts, combine and set aside.

6. Quarter some cherry tomatoes and chop a big bunch of parsley.

7. Throw some sausages on. Use the pine nut pan!

8. Check on the bulgur and zucchini. They're probably just lovely. If so, add the parsley, two remaining cloves of garlic and the pine nuts. Squeeze a lemon over them. Add some olive oil. Stir. You're done! One dish out of the way!

9. Make a dressing for the carrot salad. Finely dice a tiny shallot and place in your dressing-making device (like a tall glass). Add a spoonful of Dijon mustard, honey, salt and white wine vinegar. When making vinaigrettes, always put your water-based ingredients in together first before adding oil. This helps you get a better emulsification. Now add a trickle of olive oil. Just a bit. Stir a lot. You should see it thickening. Add some more oil and keep stirring. Eventually it will get quite thick and glossy and you can start adding the oil faster. Taste and adjust sugar/salt/vinegar/oil as needed.

7. Dice one stalk of celery and grate two carrots and one big beet. Toss them with the dressing. Another dish done!

8. How are the sausages? Getting close? Burn them just a bit. They're ready, too!

9. Your eggplants should be mushy and fragrant now. Take them out of the oven, give them a rough chop and add the pieces to the yogurt/pomegranate mix. That's it! Four dishes made while you were waiting for dinner to cook.

Tomorrow you can have a mound of each of these babies with a sliced sausage on top and not only will this be pretty healthy and colourful, but your co-workers will be jealous little suckers.

But back to tonight and back to this soup. 

This will feed four people or two very, very greedy people. Whatever. We were watching Tampopo at the time and how can you watch that movie and not continuously eat soup if there's soup to be eaten? Anyway. Cut four pieces of bread and toast them. I used a seeded rye and it was actually ok. Grate some emmenthal or gruyere.

At this point you could put the soup into individual bowls, top each one with a slice of toast and a bunch of cheese and broil, or if you don't have bowls you know are over safe, just put the pieces of toast right into the soup pot (carefully, so they float), cover the whole thing with cheese and stick the whole thing in the oven under the broiler/grill until it bubbles.  

Ugh. How did you manage to make so many delicious things in such a short period of time? What will you do now except feel full and smug?

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J has just told me that this will definitely not last all week. That could be because he's eaten three sausages today alone. Something tells me he'll see to it that there's still some grated carrot and beet for my lunch by the time Friday is here, though.

Comments

[Buy Jade]

I have been meaning to write about something like this on my blog and this has given me an idea. Thanks

[MBT Shoes]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

[katie]

You know you would be capable of that too, Dad. Don't even try to deny it.

[Dad]

OK,now i'm hungry all over again! what a great and fast way to bridge between monday morning and friday nite. But three sausages in a day? hmmmm