Engorgeous Sweet Potato Vichysoisse

The food: Sweet Potato and Leek Vichysoisse

The story:

In my novel The Oakdale Dinner Club, the character Mary Ann, who is itching to have an extra-marital affair (for quasi-justifiable, “get hers” reasons, after her husband cheated), brings to a key meeting of the dinner club something another character refers to as “the unfortunately named” Engorgeous Soup. The recipe comes from a (fictional) cheesy cookbook Mary Ann has found called “Cooking for Lovers” – on another occasion, she makes a Chocolate Orgasm cake from the same book – and she hopes the soup will act as an aphrodisiac on her intended affair prospect.

I didn’t describe the soup in detail in the book, but the soup I had in mind when I was writing the passage was a Sweet Potato Vichysoisse that has been in my home repertoire since 1985, when I found the recipe in The Silver Palate Good Times cookbook.

The vichysoisse is smooth, silky, and rich-tasting, thanks to white wine and lime zest/juice that deepen the flavours of the sweet potatoes, leeks, stock, milk and heavy cream. A bowl of the soup, garnished with frizzled leeks as shown in my photo above, would make a lovely light lunch or supper served alongside a few chunks of toasted focaccia, say.

Sidenote: you can hear me talking about food, affairs and The Oakdale Dinner Club with the CBC Radio One “Host Shelagh Rogers at CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter web page.

Sweet-Potato Vichysoisse*, adapted from The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook (by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins)

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter
4 leeks (white part only), well rinsed, dried and sliced
6 cups chicken stock or canned chicken broth
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
Grated zest and juice of 1 lime
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy or whipping cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Melt the butter in a large stock pot over medium-high heat. Add the leeks and sauté until soft and transparent.
2. Add the stock, wine and sweet potatoes. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.
3. Let cool off the heat about 15 minutes, then stir in lime zest and juice, milk and cream. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Puree the soup in batches in a blender until very smooth.
5. The soup can be served hot or cold, with garnishes of your choice.
6. The recipe says it serves 6, but I find it makes more like 8-10 servings.

*Aphrodisiac qualities not guaranteed.

Sides take center stage

The food: Side dish dinners

Side dishes for dinner at home

The story:

When I read holiday dinner menus – in magazines, newspaper articles or in cookbooks – the photos and recipes that usually start me salivating are for the side dishes.

I love me some roast turkey with gravy – when I was a teenager, I requested my family’s traditional four starch (bread stuffing, potato stuffing, baked sweet potatoes AND steamed rice) roast turkey feast as my birthday meal, in August! – but I’m also happy, especially on non-holiday occasions, to fill my plate with a variety of side dishes and call it a meal. The mix of vegetable preparations feels and tastes rich and flavorful, even when there’s no meat or poultry on the plate.

Pictured above is a side dish dinner E and I cooked up recently. At the time, I was reading for review A Year in Lucy’s Kitchen, by Lucy Waverman, and decided to test out two recipes from it, one for asparagus with watercress dressing (see the recipe on Lucy Waverman’s website here) and the other for roasted Maple Syrup Sweet Potatoes.

To round out the meal, E made a dish of leeks and chestnuts from a recipe in New York magazine (recipe here) to which he added bacon, just because.

The foods in combination on the plate made a pleasingly colourful and tasty still life that felt healthy, the bacon notwithstanding. The standout was the watercress dressing – a mixture of olive oil, orange and lemon juice, mayo, mustard and watercress that, as I wrote in my review of the book was liquid gold. I look forward to making it again – for Christmas dinner, perhaps, with deconstructed Beef Wellington.

The side dishes for dinner concept appears to be a running theme with me – I already blogged about this kind of eating in London here and while at an Italian restaurant in South Beach recently, I found myself drawn to a selection of vegetali for lunch (pictured below) that included brussel sprouts, fennel, beets, more asparagus and a delicate caponatina made with eggplant, peppers and onions.

Which reminds me: post-holidays, I’ll have to make some caponata of my own.

Vegetali at Sardinia Enoteca in South Beach