- Today we have (gentle music)
way too many leeks in the garden.
We have some watercress that is overtaking the pond.
I don't have any potatoes
but I grabbed a couple from the store.
I'm gonna harvest some of this produce for you guys
and make one of my favorite soups ever, potato leek soup.
Looks like Bobka is here for the leek harvest.
Oh.
So you remember when we planted these leeks it was
man, at least three months ago
and I split them out from started in seeds.
So we actually multi-sowed them in these little trays
and then split those trays out into individual leeks
and then planted them deep.
So made a furrow, planted them deep,
and you probably saw that on our Homesteading video.
But it's just about time to harvest these
and so, what I'm gonna do here is just
literally pull them right up.
This is a really healthy looking one
and you can see the deeper you bury a leek
the more of this white you're gonna get.
So the only part of the leek I'm gonna be using
for the potato leek soup
is actually from here all the way up to about there or so.
Once we get past here you get into the leaves
and there's certainly things you can do with it,
I'm just not very familiar with it.
But I need about four of these for the soup,
so let's pull four of the biggest ones.
This honking guy right here.
And it's actually a little deceiving.
Sometimes
the biggest ones from a leaf perspective
are not the biggest from
the part we're gonna use perspective.
And there's a way to get this a little bit better.
What I could have done is
as this was planted and growing up,
I could have hilled some soil up
and forced this part to be white as well,
it's called blanching,
I just didn't do it.
We have so many leeks
I don't think it's gonna be a huge deal.
So I need one more.
Okay.
Let's bring these on over to the sink
and grab some watercress.
So,
as you can see,
the watercress has gone absolutely crazy.
This patch here, believe it or not was actually started
from a cutting no bigger than this.
And it took about, I would say three or four weeks
for it to take over this complete area.
Now over here, this is where the return to the pond is.
I put about five of these types of cuttings, right in here.
It looked like almost nothing at all
and now, as you can see, this is also exploding.
So I wanna cut out about
two, three cups of watercress to make it into the soup.
And fortunately,
that hustle brings the population down a bit 'cause,
I gotta be honest, this is a little bit crazy right now.
So take a look at this.
You can see how the watercress propagates itself
and just how bonkers these roots get.
And if you don't take control of this
it will go absolutely wild in this pond
and actually will become a significant problem.
'Cause you don't want all this root tissue
getting its way into these rocks
because there's really nowhere for it to go
once it dies off
and it becomes this like really stinky scummy mess.
So I'm actually gonna pick some of this out of the pond
on top of harvesting it.
Just get some of this root tissue outta here
eventually that will decompose
and we really don't want that.
Take a look at that.
Talk about hydroponics guys.
So I think I've got about two cups or so I would say
I just need to go over to the sink
and trim 'em up and wash 'em up.
All right, to the leeks. (bright music)
We need to clean these guys up.
So what I typically like to do is
this type of outer leaf is totally dead
and it's not gonna be useful at all.
So I just peel away,
and that usually reveals a nice amount
of that inner white leek tissue.
You don't want to take too many of these off
because what you're doing is actually stripping
the thickness of this right here.
So that's enough, 'cause remember,
I'm only cutting up to about here or so.
So what I want to do is I'll give this a quick
tap,
Will get some of those dirt clods out of there.
I'm just gonna chop the very very bottom off
just this much.
You don't wanna take off any more than you have to.
So just that much,
and there you go.
I've got a beautiful, beautiful leek.
You wanna go to where it's about
pale green and the first significantly
healthy looking leaves start showing up.
So I can go to about there or so.
This will go into the compost.
This I'll bring indoors and I'll chop up for the leek soup.
So I got a couple more these to do
and that's why I like this outdoor sink.
You guys remember when we built this,
it's because I can take a garden fresh piece of produce
and turn it into something that's kitchen ready
before it actually gets into the kitchen.
Next up we have to prep the watercress.
So I just ripped a bunch out like I showed you guys,
but there's some of this stuff
I definitely don't want to eat.
I don't want to eat the root tissue
and I don't want to eat, for me,
any section that has come to flower
or is slightly starting to yellow.
And so a lot of this will end up getting
composted out or given to the chickens.
Actually the chickens will probably really like this.
I think what I might do is just rip off
the leaves that I want
in about two cups amount,
it's probably a little bit faster this way.
When I've made this soup in the past,
I've always made it with
a store bought watercress 'cause I,
traditionally it's actually somewhat hard to grow watercress
'cause as you see, it really thrives in pure
aquatic environment.
So at least right next to like a riverbed,
which I didn't have a riverbed at my last place.
So,
this is my first time doing it
and I'm really curious to see if it is tasty or terrible.
We'll have to see.
So I think I have about two cups of watercress
and that's all I need from outdoors.
The last thing I want to do
as is tradition now on these cooking videos,
is take this big old cluster
of what I think should be pretty tasty greens
for the chickies and toss it in.
(soft cheerful music)
Yet another treat from plant daddy.
(chicken clucking)
Looks like silver the wine dots are curious
right off the gate,
right out of the gate.
A little curious, little tentative.
Yep, there they go.
I feel like when one goes, they're all gonna go.
I think that's a win, I think that's a win.
They're gonna eventually make their way through.
Here we are.
We're back in Kev's kitchen,
I promise some of these faux pas that we made
in our roasted video, (chuckles)
I'm a little better at soups guys.
So here we go.
I've got the leeks.
I need to basically just rough chop the leeks.
The only thing I didn't have off hand,
which is weird for me,
is a potato.
I have some growing
they just weren't ready to come out of the ground.
So we need one potato for this
and then our watercress is in there.
That goes in a little later, so I'll wait on that.
The first thing I'm just gonna do is
chop these into basically saute able chunks.
Eventually this gets blended anyways.
So you just wanna chop it into a format
that you can work with it.
The leeks are done.
So I'll chop the potato up next.
Only one potato.
If it was up to me, I'd put in more
but I think it would be a little overkill in this case.
So this is just a rusted potato.
Next up,
I'm gonna toss some avocado oil.
I think the recipe calls for olive oil,
I typically tend to cook with avocado oil.
Avocado oil tends to go rancid a little bit less often
and I think there's just less quality issues with it
in general.
There's all sorts of weird issues you can have
with olive oil.
(cooker knob cracking)
So on we go, high heat.
I'll let this heat up a little bit.
Okay, so in we go with the leeks.
The leeks go for five minutes first.
So those are going in.
I over leeked a little bit because I don't really care.
It called for three leeks, I went with four.
Get these guys going,
five minutes,
then you go in with potatoes, soften 'em up,
and then we'll put it in our broth
and the rest of our ingredients.
We got about five minutes
to do a little quick wash and prep.
It did come out of the epic pond guys,
it's not like it came right out of a fresh grocer.
So I'm gonna give it a little bit of an extra wash.
I know that this gets heated to the point
where bacteria aren't probably gonna be a problem
but, let's go ahead and give it a wash anyways.
I think watercress is one of the most
nutrient dense greens by weight out there.
It might even be the number one.
So now we're just gonna give these a rough, rough chop.
I just need to get them down to a somewhat uniform shape
so that when I put 'em in here and they wilt in,
they don't just completely overtake the size of my pan here.
So let's toss the potatoes in next.
We'll give it another few minutes or so
we just need to soften them a little bit
'cause actually once we add in our broth,
that's when we're really gonna be softening
these potatoes up.
From our last video, I've got a couple extra cloves.
I'm just gonna throw one homegrown garlic clove in too.
Okay, we're about ready here.
I think the next step is to add some broth.
So I just have some organic chicken broth right here,
family size, too bad Papa Jacque,
he's feeling a little under the weather.
You guys are probably wondering where,
where our boy the garden hermit is.
Well maybe I'll bring him some soup
'cause that's what garden bros do for one another.
(gentle music)
I just need three cups here.
At this point we kind of have to wait.
So we're gonna throw it down to a simmer once the
broth heats up a bit
and we just need to let those potatoes soften
and then everything soften a bit.
And then I just need a simmer for 20.
So I'll see you guys in about
20, 25 minutes or so.
Looks pretty good, doesn't it?
Let's go ahead and add in our watercress.
So I need to take it off the heat, so we'll do that.
And I'm just going to top it off
with this watercress,
and that's about as much as I think we need.
And we're gonna let it wilt here for about,
I don't know, four or five minutes cover on.
So I'll see ya back in a few.
Now we get to use
my favorite tool in the kitchen of all time,
the immersion blender.
We'll check the watercress,
I feel like it's more or less wilted.
I'm gonna call it wilted, I don't really know.
So there's a little bit of dairy product I'm gonna add in
but first I need to blend this.
So I think the best way to use an immersion blender
is to just pop it at the bottom.
If you come up too high on it
the blade starts hitting the surface of the mixture
and it just starts spinning it everywhere.
So this is how I've learned.
(blender whirling)
Okay.
It's more or less where I want it to be.
The next thing I'm adding is a half cup of milk.
And what that does is that
it's just adding a little bit of creaminess,
a little bit of fat.
But then this is something I've not added
to a watercress soup before,
so I'm somewhat curious how this will go.
This is a third of a cup of sour cream.
Now I know watercress is pretty peppery,
pretty bitter sometimes, pretty spicy.
And so this tends to mellow that out.
Add a little bit of fat in there
that I think will taste really good.
I just, I've usually done heavy cream,
I haven't done sour cream.
So I'm gonna do a quick taste test.
The flavor is actually completely there
this is really tasty,
but it's a little flat.
So I'm gonna throw some salt and pepper in there.
So the salt I'm using is from Squared Roots Farm.
We actually had the owner of Squared Roots Farm
on the podcast a while back.
This is garlic salt.
Okay, I've got the
Kamaaina brand sea salt.
This is actually from a viewer.
You guys have probably been wondering
who's actually filming this video,
'cause Jacque is a little under weather.
He's not here.
My garden homie is not cooking with me.
Well, one of our new team members,
Ian, is behind the camera.
So instead of Jacque coming and doing a taste test,
Ian's gonna pop out and we'll taste this together
and see how more or less a completely homemade
besides the potato,
potato leek watercress soup tastes.
Let's go back to where it all began.
The final garnish is a sprig of the original,
just one tiny little piece of watercress
for each of the soups.
So Ian's coming in,
our videographer here at Epic Gardening,
for the inaugural taste test of watercress soup.
Come on in Ian.
- Let's check it out.
- So, you've had this before or no?
- Never had it like this. - Like a potato leek.
- I've had a potato leek but never blended like this.
- Okay, well let's go in.
- So, yeah, I'm very excited.
- Let's go in.
- A little bit of the sour cream here.
Hmm.
Okay, wow.
- It's actually bomb.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It's actually bomb.
We've redeemed ourself.
For I redeem myself from my roasted,
roasted turnip recipe.
It's crazy how much (soft music)
the watercress flavor comes down
when you add the cream and the,
the milk in there, wow.
(soft upbeat music)
I will put the recipe down
on the video description for you guys.
Wanted you guys to get introduced to Ian on the team.
He's behind the camera a lot these days
we've got a lot of videos coming out.
so we're gonna chill,
we're gonna enjoy this as the sun sets.
We'll see you on another video.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing
- Really good.
- It's actually completely fire.