Cooking With Nik & Little Bear, Ep 2: Proper Peasant Potato Soup
Channel: Cooking With Nik & Little Bear
Date: 2017-03-19

Nik will teach you how to cook the delicious, nourishing, cheap and easy way, ably assisted by his unfortunate & ridiculous dog, Little Bear.

EPISODE 02: Proper Peasant Potato Soup
11 mins, 13 sec / Shot: 15 March 2017 / Uploaded: 19 March 2017

~ HOW TO MAKE PROPER PEASANT POTATO SOUP ~

This is simple, wholesome and cheap as dirt: it will feed four for about $4.  As will inevitably occur on occasion, when there’s nothing in the cupboard but spuds and a rank old onion, this will keep you going for another day and you won’t be sorry to eat it – it looks atrocious but is actually really good!  Just make sure you’ve got some good bread to go with it.

YOU WILL NEED:
– Olive oil (like ¾ of a cup)
– A large onion
– At least ½kg of spuds (6-8 small ones, maybe 4-5 biggies) – red or purple skinned, skin on!
– 1-2 tablespoons cumin seeds
– A bay leaf
– Good vegie stock
– 3 heaped tablespoons of plain flour
– 1 teaspoon of dried thyme (optional)
– Malt vinegar (about ¼ cup)
– Salt and pepper

METHOD:

1) Heat a good lug of olive oil in a large pot.  Dice the onion and brown it in the oil with at least a tablespoon of cumin seeds – about 5 mins.  Chop the potato into manageable pieces and throw it in the pot, mixing to coat with the oil.  After a minute or two, add about 2L of water and crank the heat to bring to the boil.

2) Chuck in a bay leaf, a good teaspoon of stock powder, plenty of pepper and the dried thyme.  Once boiling, give it a taste and add some salt and/or more stock if you think it needs more flavour (but remember the flavours will intensify as it reduces and you will also be adding vinegar and a bunch of flour, giving it a hearty bready flavour, later).  Feel free to add a bit more water as you go if starts to look a bit chunky and not soupy enough.

3) Have a break for 5 minutes, then taste and check the cumin is prominent enough, if not, add more.

4) While the soup is boiling, in another pot heat ½-¾ cup of olive oil and add three heaped tablespoons of flour.  Stir until smooth and drop the heat to low.  Stir almost constantly (it will take about 10 minutes and if it starts to burn you’re stuffed).  It will eventually get to a kind of tan/light caramel colour and smell a bit toasty – then you’re good to go. 

5) At this point, add the malt vinegar to the soup to taste – you want it to be vinegary but too much will wreck it.

6) This next step is easier if you have a helper, and it’s important to have the soup boiling and the oil/flour mixture piping hot:  Get the soup moving at a moderate pace (have someone stir it in a steady circular fashion) and add the oil/flour mix one spoonful at a time until it’s all in there.  You can dribble the last bit in if you like, but be careful not to go too quickly because too much hot oil in the soup at once will incite violence (it will boil explosively and spit at you).  The soup should thicken and go opaque.  Extricate the bay leaf.

7) Serve with a sprinkle of fresh parsley, cracked pepper and a very light spattering of balsamic (optional) for extra zing.  You also need to serve this with fat slices of toasted sourdough slathered with butter – shit bread will suffice, but good bread really makes it! 
 
8) For the carnivores (this is totally unnecessary but kind of excellent):  Try grilling a rasher of bacon until it’s totally crispy (turning it a couple of times as you go).  Chop/crumble it up and sprinkle over the top of each bowl.