Anne Can Cook

Leeks are new territory for me. I had never had one until one of my shopping trips to Trader Joe's in Minneapolis. TJ's sells pre-cut leeks in packages of two. I thought, why not? I brought a package home to Iowa, and then panicked. The logical thing to do when one panics is, of course, to turn to Twitter. I believe my tweet looked something like this:
"What do I use these leeks for? Should I saute them with my gnocchi? What do I do?!"
Luckily, one of my friends directed me in the direction of Nunkin and her potato leek soup. I asked her for her recipe and she kindly obliged.
I promptly made the soup and it was awesome, much like Nunkin herself. I really cannot say enough nice, glowing things about her, particularly since she is letting me post her recipe here.
Without further ado, here is Nunkin's Potato Leek Soup, as copied and pasted from the original message.
"2-ish T butter
3 leeks, white/light green parts chopped (fairly fine slice)
1 small white onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2-3 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 shallot, chopped (not really necessary, but I have fun shoving onions in this soup)
4 or so red potatoes, peeled (if you feel like it) and diced
4-ish cups veggie broth
roughly 1/3 to 1/2 c heavy cream
some herbs if you feel like it (I like dill or chives or both if I have any on hand)
BACON, cooked and chopped
CHEEBS

In dutch oven or large sewp-making pot or whatever, drop the butter in and let it melt. When the butter has gotten all nice and melty, drop in the leeks and let them cook for a minute or two until they soften. Add the garlic, onion, carrot, celery and shallot, stir it around and let
it hang out for about 5 or so minutes so that all those veggies start to soften and start smelling yummy. Then dump in the potatoes and the veggie broth (and any extra water you might need to make the broth level just cover the potatoes) and any dry herbs you might want to use. Bring it to a boil, drop the heat and let it hang out on the stove for about 45 minutes - an hour or so until everything is nice and soft and falling apart.
When it's hit that stage, remove it from the heat, dump in any fresh herbs you might want to dump in (chives are awesome) and let it cool for a few minutes,
and then blend it either in batches through a blender or with an immersion blender or what have you (you could probably mush it to bits with a potato masher,
honestly). When it's all blended, stir in the cream and adjust the seasonings. I usually serve with a handful of bacon and a handful of cheebs thrown on top, but you could probably mix that in too and it would be good."

I've been tossing in cheese with the cream, and then serving more on top. The more cheese, the merrier.

I have to say that this is some of the tastiest soup I've ever had. It's also relatively filling, which is good because I would be liable to eat the entire pot's worth if it wasn't.