I think my palate quickly became accustomed to simpler flavors, and cooking sure became easier.
Recently, hubs came home with a huge crop of leeks. What he thought were garlic shoots turned into 10 pounds of leeks. He said he wanted me to cook a potato leek soup instead of Colcannon. And so I obliged. I rinsed a lot of dirt from the leeks, the green leafy tops of which I boiled for 30 minutes with a tablespoon of salt, a huge bunch of lemon and English thyme, garlic cloves, and pepper. That was it! And the scent fragranced my condo as I was chopping the white and light green roots, the garlic, and the white potatoes. With the stove turned off and the broth cooling, I sauteed the chopped leeks in more than the 3 tablespoons of butter called for in the recipe. Once the leeks softened, I poured in the strained leek broth, garlic and potatoes and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
I had leek broth leftover. I borrowed Cecilia's immersion blender to puree the soup and unfortunately burned myself as well as drop a glass jar of the soup I was giving to Cecilia. I kind of gave up at that point.
The soup, however, was fucking delicious and because I used a lot of butter, no need to add heavy cream or even milk, nor the lemon juice called for in the recipe. So delicious that I plan on cooking the rest of the leeks in more soup with the pound of potatoes I have left.
