When the week 6 CSA box held leeks (yeay! leeks!), I knew that I had to make potato-leek soup. It’s one of those great dishes that I have no idea why I don’t make it. So, here I am. Making it.

I perused some recipes to see what others have done in terms of making a soup, but most of the soups I saw involved the use of a stick blender or a food processor to make the soup smooth. I knew that might not improve acceptance from the kids, and neither dh nor I were really interested in a smooth soup. Chunky seemed the way to go. I also saw some folks suggesting that you put bacon in during cooking or after, and I liked the idea of bacon during cooking, to impart some extra flavor.

What this then turned into is basically a loaded baked potato soup with leeks and shallots AND THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Before bringing this to the table, I hit up the grocery store for a nice crusty boule – and that went ever so nicely. Soup on a crisp Fall night is great, but soup with a nice crusty bread is just divine.

I will note that dh and I diverge a little on soup style. He wanted chunky, and I was happy to oblige. He wanted something chowder-esque, being a native New Englander, so I obliged. However, when he dared tell me afterward that we could have gone with less bacon so that the flavor of the soup could have been more subtle, that’s where I drew the line! Less bacon? Did he know who he married? I’m no Paula Deen, but saying “too much bacon” near me is like claiming that a dessert has “too much chocolate”. Say what? Try again, buddy. I know that “subtle” is code for “bland”, because native New England food isn’t always known for having much spice to it. However, I’m NOT a native New Englander, and I believe in flavor! So, no bacon corners were cut in the recipe listed below. I stand by all that bacon. Mmm. Bacon.

One thing we definitely agreed upon: this soup is totally worth making again. Of course, it wasn’t until after dinner was well over that I realized I never took a picture of it. We’d dug into it so eagerly (and then drained the entire thing between the two of us) that the only picture I have to show you is this:

If you can't tell, we *really* liked it

(All deference to Daily Cynema, who totally understands how this happens in food blogging…)

As for the servings below, please note that a “serving” is a single bowl. Since dh and I each had two bowls + bread as our entire dinner, we emptied the crock pot between us. If you serve this as an appetizer/soup course/accompaniment to a larger meal, then you can probably get away with 4 servings. If you plan to serve this as a cup of soup, rather than in a bowl, you could probably get 6 servings, easily.

Prep Time: 20-30 min

Cooking Time: 8-10 hrs on LOW

Serves: 4 bowls (or ~6 cups)

Ingredients

3 leeks

1 lb red potatoes

1 large shallot or 1 medium yellow onion

8 slices cooked bacon

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp white pepper

1 bay leaf

1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream

shredded cheddar cheese or monterey jack/cheddar blend, for topping

Make it Happen

1. Wash the leeks and remove the stems; you’ll only be using the white part of the leeks. Thinly slice the leeks and add them to a 4qt crock pot.

2. Wash and peel the potatoes; remove any eyes. Then give them a quick rinse and dice them. Add the potatoes to the crock pot.

3. Peel and thinly slice the shallot and add to the crock pot. (If using a yellow onion instead, peel and mince it before adding it to the crock pot.)

4. Crumble or roughly chop the bacon slices so that no piece is more than about 3/4 inch wide. Add the bacon to the crock pot, then stir to combine all of the ingredients.

5. Add the broth, salt and white pepper to the crock pot, then stir to combine.

6. Add the bay leaf. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10 hrs.

7. Remove the bay leaf. Add the sour cream to the crock pot and stir well to combine.

8. Serve with cheese on the side and allow people to add cheese on top, as they wish.

When the CSA week 3 box contained radishes, I was stumped. Too many to put in a salad, too dicey to trust that a supposedly “delectable” dip from one of my vegetarian cookbooks would really get eaten…but the crock pot DID seem like the right place to put them.

My hope was that the crock pot would neutralize the bitterness of the radishes, and the answer is…well, not so much. So, I’d only recommend adding the radishes to this meal IF you love radishes. If you don’t love radishes, by all means – skip ’em. They don’t add any flavor to the dish, in my opinion, and they lose all their color, which is just a little strange when you’re only ever used to radishes being this really pretty pinkish-red color. I also used a white onion in the original version of this recipe, but a yellow onion would be far superior, so the recipe below lists a yellow onion instead.

Now, why is this flank steak semi-drunk? First off, I didn’t really want to make flank steak. This was our Rosh Hashanah dinner this year, so I really wanted brisket. When my grocery store only had 6 lb briskets, and I just didn’t feel like butchering a $30+ slab o’meat into smaller portions, I was ready to give up…until I saw the perfect little flank steak beckoning to me. As to the drunk part, I wanted the meal to be simple yet tasty. And, like my early fall beef crock pots, I wanted something that wasn’t overly heavy. So, I went for the beef broth in the fridge (left over from my Crock Pot Beef with Beets) and then reached for a bottle of Madeira. There’s nothing like some wine to really make a dish vibrate on a higher frequency. A little water, and there was plenty of liquid to keep the meat nice and moist throughout cooking. The Madeira gave the meat a nice sweetness that really just worked for me.

You can let this one go for up to 12 hrs if you want the meat to fall apart on you, and you can turn the liquid into a gravy easily enough (instructions below). OK, enough yakking…on to the recipe.

Radishes may lose their color, but they're still plenty bitter!

Prep Time: 5-10 mins

Cook Time: 8-10 hrs on LOW

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

1-1/2 to 2 lb flank steak

1 medium or large yellow onion

1/2 cup low sodium beef broth

1/2 cup Madeira (or other flavorful red wine)

1/2 cup water

1 bunch radishes, greens removed, washed & stems/roots removed (optional)

1-1/2 Tb cornstarch + water to dissolve it, for thickening a gravy (optional)

Make it Happen

1. Peel the onion and slice it thinly, no more than 1/3″ wide. Layer the bottom of the crock pot with the onion slices to make a bed for the flank steak.

2. Place the flank steak on top of the onion slices. (If adding the radishes, put them on top of the flank steak.)

3. In a measuring cup, pour in the three liquids so they can mix a little, then pour the combined liquid over top of the flank steak. Cover and cook on LOW for 8-10 hrs.

4. When cooking is done, remove the flank steak and place on a cutting board; remove the onions and radishes and place them in a serving bowl (or put them on a platter to serve with the flank steak). Slice the flank steak against the grain. Note: if you put the flank steak in for a longer cook time, cutting might be difficult because it may just fall apart on you. There are worse problems to have.

5. If you want to make a gravy with the liquid in the crock pot, pour the liquid into a skillet and heat to a boil over medium-high heat. Let the liquid boil for about 5 minutes, then reduce the temperature to medium. In a small bowl, mix the cornstarch and enough water to dissolve the cornstarch completely. Add this mixture to the skillet and whisk briskly until the cornstarch/water mixture has blended completely into the liquid from the crock pot. Pour into a gravy boat and serve with the flank steak, onions and radishes.