Vichyssoise

The origin of "Vichyssoise" is unclear, with France and the United States both having claims on the famous soup, which is usually served cold. Even if "Vichyssoise" was invented in the United States, its ties to France would still be substantial, because the man often credited with its invention, Louis Diat, the chef at the Ritz-Carlton in New York, was born in France, not far from Vichy, the city after which he claimed to have named the soup in 1917, originally, "Crème Vichyssoise Glacée" (iced or chilled cream Vichyssoise). Diat said he used a recipe from his grandmother's potato and leek soup in France as the basis for Vichyssoise. Julia Child, the famous television cook and culinary author, although she lived and trained in France, and later popularized French cooking in her native United States, maintained that Vichyssoise was an American invention. The are many variations to Vichyssoise, although most versions are similar. This is my own version (hey, I told you there were many variations, hahaha).

Ingredients:

4 cups chopped potatoes
1 cup leeks, white parts only, cut into about 1 inch pieces
2/3 cup white onion, roughly chopped
2 cups chicken broth (or vegetable stock)
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon black or white pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme (thyme can add lots of flavor, so be careful how much you use)  
1/2 teaspoon salt (if the broth has a high salt content, you can leave out the salt)
chives for garnish

Cook the potatoes, leeks and onion in water until tender. Drain the vegetables and while still warm put them into a blender or a food processor, then add the chicken broth, butter, white pepper and salt. Blend/process the soup until smooth, then add the butter, heavy cream and dried thyme, blend/process again until well mixed. The soup is intended to be rather thick, but if it is too thick for you, you can thin it with a little more cream or even milk. Sieve the soup if you want to be sure it is smooth, with no vegetable pieces. I use a sieve that allows some of the small thyme leaves into the soup. Refrigerate the soup for several hours, until it is well chilled. Snip a few pieces of fresh chives on top of each serving.    

WORD HISTORY:
Slack-This word is distantly related to "lax" and to "relish," both words of Latin derivation borrowed by English. It goes back to Indo European "sleg," which had the notion, "to be loose, or slack." This gave Old Germanic "slakas/slakaz," seemingly meaning, "be loose, be infirm, not taut;" thus also, "be weak." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) the adjective "slæc," which meant, "lazy," then also, "slow, lax," and this then became "slack." The noun was derived from the adjective in the 1300s with the general meaning of "looseness," and then also the figurative, "lull in some activity." "Slacks" was applied to loose fitting military pants (1820s?). The noun meaning "dust from coal" is not really the same word and simply came to be spelled and pronounced as "slack," to which it is unrelated, but it is related to "slag." The verb form "slacken" seems to me to be a hold over from when English used "en" endings on most infinitive verbs,^ and this verb developed from the adjective in the 1400s, but the shortened verb form "slack" was also used in the 1500s; both forms meaning, "to become loose, to become less active." The verb "slack" is now often used with "off," in "slack off," to mean, "to become less active in something." "Slack's" German relative is "schlack" (slack, loose, lazy, careless), "schlaksig" (would literally be "slacky" in English, and means "lanky"), the noun "Schlaks" (tall and lanky man), Low German had "slak," Dutch had "slac," and Swedish has "slack" (slack, floppy).  

^ Originally English, like its German cousin, used "-en" on many infinitive forms of verbs. In those times, English speakers didn't have to say "to" with a verb to indicate it was the infinitive. Later, when verb conjugations began to "streamline" in English, "to" was added to represent the former -en endings. Standard German has not changed, and that's why German infinitive verb forms commonly end in -en; as for example, "sehen" (to see), "machen" (to make or do), "hören" (to hear).