Potage parmentier & blackberry tart

Potage parmentier

My CSA continues to pound me with gazillions of root veggies, so I had a bunch of leeks and a bunch of potatoes at my disposal. I felt inspired to make potage parmentier - potato and leek soup - a recipe I'd read about in Julie & Julia. I wasn't that much of a fan of Powell's book, and I'm even less of a fan of Powell herself, but what I really enjoyed were the recipes. My mom is getting me Julia Child's two-volume set for Christmas, but in the meantime, I thought this famous recipe would help me use up my veggies.

It's very simple: boil 1 lb. potatoes, 3 cups leeks, and some salt in 2 quarts water for almost an hour. Be sure to rinse the leeks, or you'll end up with a very gritty soup. (To rinse leeks, I fill a large bowl with water, then chop the leeks and throw them in the water. After you slosh them around a bit, the dirt settles to the bottom and you can remove the leeks with your hands or a slotted spoon.)

After you have boiled them for a while, you mash them up, test the seasoning, add butter, and serve. Mmmm.

This is a perfect winter recipe, and I expect this might find its way into my regular rotation. It was really savory and satisfying for a vegetable soup, and it wasn't as much butter as I'd expected. Score one for Julia Child.

Blackberry tart

One of my law school friends hosts an annual pie party: she makes pies, people bring pies, everyone eats pies. I have tried to make it every year I've been invited, and so far my repertoire has included two cream pies: grasshopper pie and banana cream pie. She makes apple pies, pecan pies, pumpkin pies, and occasionally a cherry pie, so I figured I'd bring something different: a blackberry tart.

I decided to try this recipe from the Food Network; it seemed interesting with the ground nuts in the crust, plus people tended to praise the lemon in the filling. However, I don't have any ground almonds, so I decided to grind my own (though I used walnuts) by putting a handful of nuts in a Ziploc bag and running over it with a rolling pin. That seemed to do the job. You blind-bake the crust (i.e., without anything in it), then add the filling later.

For the filling, I used blackberries that I picked this summer and froze. The recipe calls for 3 pints, but I just had a huge bag of them in the freezer, so that presented a problem. However, I realized I had pint glasses! I just filled a pint glass three times (to the level you would fill it with liquid to drink) and that was exactly right. Awesome.

You sautee the blackberry filling "until a sauce is formed," and here I think the recipe is a little understated. The "sauce" was this congealed delicious blackberry blob that I desperately wanted to eat immediately. Screw the pie. However, I soldiered on and put it into the tart pan for baking.


After baking, the tart overflowed a bit, but ohhhh man, it looked delicious.

I took it out of the tart pan to clean it up a bit for the party. I think it was an improvement. Look at this beautiful thing.

I can't wait to debut this at the pie party.