Potato Potahto

Do you smell that? Sniff the wind! There! That! Did you get it? Crunchy, whirly, burning leaves! Earthy, sweet, honeyed apples! Mothball-scented cozy wool sweaters, creased from months of storage! And, of course, I'm sure you're getting those soup smells, wafting from my kitchen straight into your nostrils. Right? Okay, well, one fine day, when real technology finally kicks in, you'll be able to scratch and sniff all the photographs on your screen -- but, until then, you'll have to do it all the old-fashioned way, which means making the soup yourself and then sniffing that. Deal?

So. This soup will do several things: make your belly really happy, make all your friends really happy, and officially call upon autumn to show its darling face. It's the kind of soup that will even satisfy all your must-eat-meat guests, and it will be so easy that you will actually have time to play with them when they arrive, rather than having to poke around at the stovetop while they sit in the living room, getting really drunk without you and talking about how much they miss you. Plus, as with most soups, it just keeps getting better as it ages in the fridge and as the fall days go on.

Soup. So many soups! I made a list yesterday of all the soups I want to make next week. Grand total = 26. Hmm. We'll see how that goes. I predict that it might be wise to hold off on, oh, say, maybe 25 of those? At least for now. It might also help me if I could learn how to make smaller batches of soup. Plus, then the new issue of Saveur came in the mail, and I added even more to the list. That barley soup! That dumpling soup! O, soup! Marry me! But, for now, let's stay focused on the matter at hand. Soup #1 of the season. Deemed by a certain someone as "the soup that has everything I want in a soup." Enough said, right? Okay. So here ya go.

Potato Soup
3 large baking potatoes, peeled (or partially peeled) and diced or chopped into chunks*
6 T unsalted butter
1 large yellow onion, diced
3/4 C flour
3 C vegetable broth
1 C milk
1/2 C half & half or cream
1/2 t Tabasco or other hot sauce
1 t salt
1 t pepper

Melt butter in a big pot and, when it gets sizzly, add the onions and start to cook them down on medium-high heat. Cook them until they are the way you want them for your soup -- I tend to like them on the more-cooked side, edging on caramelization, but if you just want to cook them until they are translucent, that works, too. Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon and cook for 1 minute. The mixture will be very thick and dry, but keep moving it around in the pan so that the flour-taste can cook out. Add broth, hot sauce, milk, and half & half. Stir well. Add potatoes and adjust with salt and pepper. Cook down a bit until you reach desired consistency. Add more milk if it seems too thick, and cook longer if it seems too thin.

Serve with lots of baked-potato-ish toppings: bacon, scallions, hot sauce, croutons or toasted bread crumbs, blue cheese, or cheddar cheese.

*If your potato pieces are large, you'll want to steam them for a bit before adding them to the soup, or else it'll take ages for them to soften in the soup. If the pieces are small, you can probably get away with putting them into the soup raw. BUT if you are in a hurry and you want to make the soup really fast, I would recommend steaming or microwaving the diced potatoes first.