The Easiest Potato Soup

The weather has been glorious here in South Florida… 50’s at night and 70’s during the day. This type of weather always makes me crave soup and other cold weather fare. This recipe is one of my absolutely favorite potato soups. Its different than the usual as the potatoes are not pureed and there is no cream. A generous squeeze of lemon and sour cream give it a wonderful tangy flavor, and grated carrot give it a lovely color. Last but not least… its very frugal, quick cooking and fairly healthy!
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November 20, 2008 | Filed Under Dinner, Soup

16 Critiques

5 Minute Dinner

We’re officially in the middle of our busy season. This means much less cooking for me. So we’ve been eating grilled chicken, grilled salmon, basic pasta… and then on really lazy nights… sandwiches. But don’t worry, Stephan and I aren’t suffering too much… I like to make tasty sandwiches.

This is a very simple sandwich, cooked on my grill pan. I don’t have one of those fancy Panini Pans (YET!) but I do have a basic cast iron grill pan. I simply place the sandwich on the hot pan and then place a glass pie dish on top to mash it down. After a few minutes, turn, press… and voila! Pressed sandwich. Easy Peasy, and without a $150 pan!

Dulce de Leche

Recently, I’ve had Dulce de Leche (or Confiture de lait) in several different desserts… First the outstanding crepes at Novocento, which I’ve recreated here. Then Dulce de Leche Gelato in Rome. Lastly, Dulce de Leche wedding cake at a wedding we photographed this past weekend. Although I’ve never been one to eat Dulce de Leche, that really took the cake… pun intended.

Since I had no recipe for Dulce de Leche, I scoured the internet. 99% of the recipes called to *gasp* boil a can of Condensed Milk for a few hours! I don’t know about you, but the thought of boiling a can of condensed milk gives me nightmares of shrapnel and canned milk flying all over my kitchen in the likely event the can explodes. No thank you.

So I set out to find a recipe that uses milk and sugar, as they should be the main ingredients in Dulce de Leche. I did find several, but the amount of sugar called for was outrageous. Most recipes called for 1 liter of milk and 500 grams of sugar. In lay terms… that’s a shitload of sugar. So I used 2 liters of milk and 750 grams of sugar, and it turned out fabulous. It is extremely sweet, but that’s the nature of the sweet beast.

One HUGE warning though… make sure your temperature is not too high while it cooks. At one point, I walked away and the pot boiled over. Looking at the hardened blackened sugar, I thought I ruined my new stove. Glass top stoves do not take well to burning sugar. It took 45 minutes of scrubbing (and a tear or two while I cursed Dulce de Leche) to remove all the residue from my stove top. Luckily, with my beloved Bar Keepers Friend, I managed to remove all of the burned sugar. That stuff is the shizna.
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