Creamy Potato & Leek Soup

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 leek stalk, white and lighter green, chopped *
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup carrot, diced
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon canola oil
32 ounces chicken stock (I use low sodium)
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon parsley 
crispy bacon, crumbled for topping (I happened to only have slab bacon in the refrigerator, so I cut it into cubes, before frying it, so use what you have)

In a pan over medium low heat, add the butter and oil, then add the garlic. Let cook about 30 seconds, then add the potatoes, carrot, and leek. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking, and to avoid much browning, but let cook a few minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the chicken stock, the salt and the pepper, stir well. Simmer gently until the carrot and potatoes are tender. Mix the flour with a couple of ounces of the milk, stir well to avoid lumps. Gradually drizzle the flour/milk mixture into the soup, stirring continuously, while trying to maintain the gentle simmer until the soup thickens a little. The soup is not intended to be super thick, but just slightly thickened. Let the soup cook for about a minute or so to take the raw flour taste out, then stir in the rest of the milk. Add the parsley and stir again. While the soup was simmering earlier, fry the bacon, drain on paper towels, then crumble it. Ladle the soup into bowls, sprinkle some crumbled bacon on top of each serving. By sprinkling the bacon on top, rather than cooking it with the soup, the soup itself will not carry the taste of the smoky bacon, giving you the taste of the vegetables and broth, but you still get the bacon taste when you scoop up a piece of the bacon. Kind of the best of both worlds.

* Leeks are a great vegetable, but you must cut them open and rinse them well to flush out any sand and dirt. Maybe I've just been lucky, but in more recent times, I don't see much sand/grit at all, while in the past, it was quite evident. Maybe the growing process in sandy soil has changed somewhat? Anyway, I just rinse them in sections under running water. Others recommend cutting the leek into pieces, fanning its layer a bit and soaking it in a bowl of cool water, moving the leek around to flush out the grit, which will then sink to the bottom. 

 

WORD HISTORY: 

Stalk-English has two words of this spelling, but this is the noun, with the most common meaning being, "the main stem of a plant." The word, distantly related to the noun "stall" (place for animals, small merchant stand), and to the verb "stall" (come to a standstill), goes back to Indo European "stel," which had the notion, "to stand something in place, to put or place." This gave its Old Germanic offspring, "stalon," meaning, "long wooden handle, wooden support pole." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "stalu," with the meaning "long handle, upright stake." This then became "stale" (pronounced "stahl-eh"), "upright ladder supports." It also still kept the meaning, "long handle," and the meaning "plant stem" also began to gradually become more common from the 1300s. The "k" was added, likely from the influence of Old Norse (a North Germanic cousin to English), seemingly as a diminutive (endings that add the meaning ''small(er), endearing"), making the spelling "stalke," with the "e" pronounced "eh." Forms in the other Germanic languages: German "Stiel" (handle, stem, stalk), Low German Saxon and Dutch "steel" (stem, stalk, shaft, handle), Danish "stilk" (stalk, stem), Icelandic "stillkur" (stem, stalk), Swedish "stjälk" (stalk, stem). I could not find forms in modern Norwegian or West Frisian.