Vichyssoise

With scallions and an onion languishing in the 'refrig, and a half filled basket of potatoes, remainders of our Sang Lee csa weekly veggie boxes, I thought to make Vichyssoise. With darling Husband refusing to barbecue the onions -- and he can't digest raw onions -- with the August temperature dipping to 65, possibly due to Hurricane Danny -- it just seemed right. Julia will tell you the famous one is chilled -- leek and potato simmered in lightly salted water. That's it. You can add cream at the end, or other additions such as watercress, spinach "and so forth" And of course you may substitute onions, but you will miss that "wonderful pervading and special flavor that is a trademark of the leek."

The classic French potato and leek soup, which the chef credited with creating the cold Vichyssoise version remembers from his childhood, was an invention of a scientist/nutritionist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier who championed the potato as a human food source and was also responsible for mandatory smallpox vaccinations under Napoleon, starting in 1805. As a farm boy in France, the inventive chef of the Ritz-Carlton in NY remembers he and his brother cooling the potage Parmentier with milk--delicious.

The history of food always interests me -- in 1805 what were my great grandparents eating from their East Hampton farm? Lt. Abraham Sherrill and his wife Anna Huntting had just added a kitchen wing with a "modern" fireplace in the most up-to-date style of open hearth cooking -- or so my mother researched. And the first of their three sons was born. So maybe they had a potato milk soup. Potatoes were not to become the big Long Island economy crop until 80 years later, with the loss of Brooklyn farms and rail trucking into NYC making single crop farming lucrative. Did Americans like Washington and Jefferson eat potatoes in 180o? I wonder.

According to a trivia website Thomas Jefferson served "french fries" in the White House. So says thegardenersrake.com.

I have the Thomas Jefferson Cook Book which I picked up with my mother when we visited Wintethur to see the Dominy Workshop and Collection. It lists a Potato Soup that includes butter, rice or tapioca, sorrel (or tomatoes!) and 3 egg yolks -- sieve and serve hot.

Tonight
Vichyssoise
Gardeners Bay Bluefish on the grill
Garden tomatoes with basil and garlic flowers
Corn on the cob

Darling Husband was saying our signature accent in cooking is the amazing white garlic flowers, and garlic greens, which we start adding to salads, soups, meats, fish, vegetables in the early spring when the greens pop up and now in August with those tangy flowers. We added them chopped to float on the Vichysoise, adding an aroma of garlic, and a zest.

Cost:
$5 fish (only half of it so $2.50)
$2 corn and tomato
$4.50

Bon Appetit!