Mashed Potato Soup (What Rebeca's Missing, Part 4)

Our good friend, Dr. Rebeca Plank, has been back in Boston for about a month and a half. We miss her dearly, but apparently she is on her way back to Gaborone and so I am pressed to finish posting the "What Rebeca is Missing" series (in 5 parts) before she returns. Of all the posts in this series, this one surely rings the truest, as it is probably Rebeca's overall favorite amongst all the dinners we have prepared and we know that if there's any meal she's missing it's this one.

A little back-story before we get into the tale. Shanthi and I LOVE south Indian cuisine. Many years ago, I happened upon a south indian vegetarian cookbook which I truly believe that every person who loves vegetarian cooking and loves Indian food MUST have on their shelves: Dakshin, by Chandra Padmanabhan. I love this cookbook so much that I own two copies (just in case I lose one or it falls apart or the cookbook goes out of print). The meals we've made from it are outstanding. It has a photograph of every single recipe in the book, so you can look at the pictures and say "I want to make that", and you can compare how the food looks on your plate with how it's supposed to look. The layout is perfect...cannot say enough about this cookbook.

Sadly, we did not bring a copy here to Botswana with us, assuming that we wouldn't have access to south Asian groceries. We were wrong. The Indian food in Gaborone is infinitely better than any I've had in the United States, be it Boston, San Francisco, or on Oak Tree Road in Iselin N.J....what have you. And while we cannot find fresh curry leaves, we can get just about every other south asian ingredient we need here (except, of course, fresh limes). So one day, while perusing one of the two local bookstores that have any books you might want to buy (Exclus!ve Books, in Riverwalk Mall), I found an Indian cookbook that seemed nice (and does indeed have some decent recipes): Fresh Flavours of India, by Das Sreedharan.

In this book is a recipe for a mashed potato-based soup called "Cheera Soup". The recipe didn't seem particularly Indian to me, but we tried it (being fans of all things potato), and it turned out kinda ok but not quite right. However, we liked the concept and realized that the fault was not the concept but the execution. So, I completely revised how one puts this soup together and voila! A new dish was made and Rebeca was very very happy (as were we). This soup is VERY easy to make.

OK, enough talk...let's go through the soup itself...

First, make mashed potatoes however you like. Before mashing the boiled potatoes, peel them and save the peels. I prefer garlic mashed potatoes with thyme and black pepper. Keep the addition of salt to a minimum as other components of the soup will be salty (the broth and, possibly, the onions). Putting the herbs in the mashed potatoes is great cause once in the soup they kind of leech out into the broth as you break apart the clump of mashed potato with your spoon. Ok, getting ahead of ourselves...

Next, put a pot of water on to boil. Drop in bouillon cubes (we use vegetable bouillon) to dissolve (start with just one cube and add more water or more bouillon material to taste. If you added salt to the mashed potatoes, you probably want the broth to be less salty). Make sure that the broth reaches near boiling temperature but that it doesn't boil over. If it boils over, it kind of ruins the flavor of the broth (in my opinion. Also something learned from Tampopo). Next, caramelize some onions. I like to use brown sugar and a splash of soy sauce (or tamari) for this. It makes the onions quite a bit darker than normal clarified and caramelized onions, but also adds a more complex spectrum of flavors. In addition, take the potato skins and fry them. You don't have to deep fry them, but my guess is that it might taste better if you do a rapid deep fry (we don't have a pan for this nor do I like wasting that much oil, so I just fry the potato skins in a skillet).

Slice a fresh tomato or two and wash some fresh spinach (if the leaves are big, cut them into smaller, more manageable pieces). Now that all the components of the soup are ready, it's time to assemble the soup. Remember, the broth must be piping hot...the other components will be cool or room temperature, and when the broth hits them, it will cool down. So it's key to have the broth at near boiling temperature.

First put a small mound of mashed potatoes into a soup bowl. Then surround it with slices of raw tomato.Next pile on the raw spinach. Then carefully ladle the hot broth on top of the spinach. Let the soup sit for about 30 seconds and then garnish the soup with a dollop of carmelized onions and a dollop of fried potato skins.

The tomato slices and spinach should have cooked in the hot broth to a perfect consistency. The mashed potatoes will begin to diffuse into the broth. I suspect that mixing a bit of Asian (Thai) Basil with the spinach will clinch the flavor combination in this soup, but I have not tried this yet. I know that Rebeca has some Asian basil growing at her house, so perhaps we'll try this soon. Italian basil (the type we usually find in groceries in the US) probably will not work...it wilts too fast and doesn't maintain flavor in heat as well as Asian basil does. If you try this soup out, let me know what you think!