Heaven and Earth Soup

This soup is my own invention, although I don't know if anyone else has come up with a similar soup, but that is possible. I based this recipe on German "Himmel und Erde," * a dish which combines potatoes and apples, and often, but not always, bacon. It means "Heaven and Earth," with the apples representing "heaven," as they come from up on a tree, and with the potatoes representing earth, as you dig them from the ground. There are variations to the German recipes, with some regions, like the Rhineland, mashing the potatoes and apples together, or mixing chunky applesauce into the mashed potatoes. Other recipes cook potato and apple chunks together, often by frying. You can serve this soup with a good, ice cold apple schnapps, direct from the freezer, and with a strong apple taste. Be sure to taste the schnapps to make sure it's good before serving it to others, and don't hesitate to try it more than once, to be extra certain. Just be sure you have enough left for others. Well... the hell with them! Let 'em buy their own apple schnapps.

Ingredients:

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 slices of bacon, fried and then crumbled
3 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon canola oil or other neutral-flavored oil
3 cups chicken broth (low sodium is fine)
3 large potatoes, diced
2 Granny Smith apples, cored, peeled and chopped
1 cup evaporated milk (canned milk)
2 tablespoons thyme leaves (see Word History, below)
1 teaspoon white or black pepper
salt to taste (optional, the bacon, and likely your broth, will have salt, so keep that in mind)
ice cold apple schnapps on the side (best right from the freezer)

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, fry the bacon over medium heat until crisp; remove, crumble and set aside. Sauté the onion in the bacon fat for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic, cook for another minute or two. Lower the heat to low, add the oil and sprinkle the flour over the onion/garlic mixture and stir to combine; this will form a roux coating the onion pieces. Allow to cook for another two minutes. Gradually stir in the chicken broth, then add the thyme leaves. When the broth bubbles lightly, add the potatoes, stir well. Since I've used the roux to thicken the soup early on, you will need to stir the soup fairly often to keep it from sticking, even on low heat, but allowing the bacon flavored flour mix to cook with the other ingredients adds flavor. After a few minutes, add the apple, stir further to mix well, simmer the soup. When the potatoes and apple are just barely tender, not falling apart, stir in the crumbled bacon and add the pepper (and salt, if using), then stir in the milk. Let the soup come back up to heat, but do not let it boil. Let's see, did I tell you this soup is good served with some apple schnapps?     

* For my article about German use of apples in cooking, here is the link to the article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/01/germans-and-apples.html

And that's not ice water next to the soup ....

WORD HISTORY:
Leaf-This word, related to "lodge," goes back to Indo European "leubh," which meant, "to peel or strip away a plant covering." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "lauba," which transferred the meaning to a common plant item stripped away; thus, "leaf, foliage." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "leaf" (likely pronounced lee-af). This then became "leef," before the modern version. The other Germanic languages have: German "laub," Low German Saxon "Loof," Dutch "loof," West Frisian "loaf," Icelandic "lauf(i)," Danish "løv," Norwegian "løvverk" (literally, "leaf work;" thus, 'foliage'), Swedish "löv."