Guest Post: Zucchini-Potato Soup with Potato Latkes

Amy McCoy's theory is "just because you want to save money doesn't mean that you have to skimp on taste" & her mission: "to eat the best food I can while spending as little as possible." Certainly a girl after my own heart. On her blog, Poor Girl Gourmet, she shares her tips on "hav[ing] a gourmet experience for less." And couldn't we all use a little more less?

Here's Amy's take on Zucchini-Potato Soup with Potato Latkes:

It’s been a slightly rough growing season here in New England where I live, and by “slightly rough”, I mean quite horrendous, actually. It started out innocently enough – rain every other day or so, lessening the nightly tender-seedlings watering load, and grateful was I for the gift, as the watering task frequently takes a half hour or more.

“We’d prefer it not rain, at least then we can control it,” my farmer neighbor said during one of my midsummer blueberry-hoarding visits to her front-yard farm stand. Twenty-three days of rain in June later, and half the month of July breaking precipitation records all over the Northeast, I begrudged that early rain, the rain that became the hallmark of our terribly short summer. My tomatoes, full and healthy one week, reduced to a pile of late-blighted writhing skeletons of themselves the next, followed by my onions, so wet so often that the bulk of them resemble shallots, their growth stunted so. And then the zucchini. Between the rain which begat powdery mildew, and the neglect – on those rain-soaked days – of my hand-picking bugs off of the plants, even the zucchini began to falter. But even with their early demise, there was still more than enough opportunity to bake, cook, grill, and even roast – it’s not been the warmest summer until just lately, and therefore, even roasting has had its time – copious amounts of zucchini.

A few summers back – when summer behaved like summer, and zucchini piled up in the garden seemingly daily - when pressed to come up with an answer to “whatever shall I do with all of the zucchini growing in my garden?” I would frequently make a zucchini-and-whatever-the-heck-else-is-ready-to-be-harvested soup. Despite the spectre of badness, this all-in approach usually resulted in a much better outcome than one might expect. And while I still enjoy a loosey-goosey approach to cooking every now and again, I find that some planning does, in fact, pay big dividends. As in the case of this soup. This year, we had harvested our small crop of slightly waterlogged potatoes just as the second harvest of zucchini came available, and using a dash of improvisation with just a touch more thought than employed in those early years of kitchen-garden cooking, this soup was conceived. I advise you to take the time to make the potato latke-style garnish – they’re French Fry shreds, in fact, yet the mere act of naming them latkes rather than fries makes them sound almost healthy.

Zucchini-Potato Soup with Potato Latkes
1 lb. zucchini, from approximately 2 medium or 1 large, ends trimmed off, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 lb. russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 lb. pancetta or bacon
1 medium shallot, coarsely chopped
1/4 c. parsley leaves, plus additional for garnish, coarsely chopped
4 c. vegetable broth
3/4 lb. russet potato, shredded on a box grater
vegetable oil for frying
1/4 c. sour cream for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, toss the zucchini and potatoes with the olive oil to coat. Season them with salt and pepper, and transfer them to a 9 by 13-inch rimmed baking sheet. Roast on the middle rack until the potatoes are soft and easily pierced with a fork, 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from the oven.

Cook the pancetta until just crisp in a large saucepan over medium heat. Remove the pancetta and place it on a plate lined with a paper towel to absorb any excess fat. Add the shallot to the rendered pancetta fat in the bottom of the pot, adding a tablespoon or two of olive oil if necessary – though I doubt it will be - and cook until the shallot is softened and translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the parsley, cook for 1 to 2 minutes, then add the roasted zucchini and potatoes, stir to combine, and then add the broth. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Allow the soup to cool slightly, as you will be pureeing it, and if you don’t know yet, I should tell you that hot liquid sure does not play well in the blender. In fact, be sure to blend only 1 cup of the soup at a time to avoid a blender explosion, which is a terribly unpleasant experience, I can assure you. Okay, so now that I’ve gotten that all out, proceed to puree the soup, that one cup at a time as we’ve just discussed, until all of the soup has been pureed. You’ll have about 6 cups of soup, which should now be returned to the saucepan.

Reheat the soup to your desired serving temperature, and while you do, heat at least two inches of oil for frying in a large, deep pot – one with plenty of room between its top edge and the top of those two inches of oil - until it registers 350 degrees on an oil thermometer – or until a potato shred tossed in sizzles immediately. It will take in the range of 10 to 12 minutes to get the oil to this point.

While the oil-heating is underway, form the potato shreds into potato chip-sized clumps, about 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter and no more than 1/2-inch thick. Place the finished shred-clumps – a terribly unappetizing name for them, I realize, but I’m trying to be consistent here – onto a piece of waxed paper laid upon your counter or on a rimmed baking sheet – whichever is most convenient for you. Once the oil has reached 350 degrees or is clearly at instant sizzling heat, lower 3 or 4 shred-clumps into the oil and fry until golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes per side. If you find that flipping them over, thin as they are, is a pain beyond any you have known, simply use a metal slotted spoon – a large one, not one you’d use to serve fruit salad – to submerge them in the oil. In that case, 1 to 2 minutes total is all the frying time you’ll require. Remove the former shreds that are now latkes from the oil and place them on a plate lined with a paper towel – to catch any excess oil, of course. Salt and pepper them to taste.

Now, salt and pepper the soup to taste, then ladle it out into bowls – you have enough for four adults here. Top each with a dollop of sour cream, place a latke atop the sour cream, crumble the pancetta and sprinkle it around the bowl, then toss a bit of the reserved chopped parsley over it all, and serve it forth.

Estimated cost for four: $10.07. The zucchini should just about be given away by anyone you know who happens to have a garden, but if you bought one pound, it would cost around $1.25. The potatoes should cost no more than 99¢, but we’ll call that a dollar for each use – the soup and the latkes, so $2.00. The olive oil for roasting is 48¢. The pancetta costs $8.29/pound, so 1/4 pound costs about $2.07. The shallot should cost around 25¢. The parsley should also be available from gardening friends or your very own garden, but if not, it would be about half of a bunch that costs around $1.99 at the grocery store, so $1.00 for that. The broth costs $2.39 for 4 cups (I use Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value store brand). The sour cream for the garnish costs around $2.19 for a container that holds 32 tablespoons. By “a dollop”, I mean a tablespoon, and so that adds 27¢ for four servings. The oil for frying should be recycled as you can use it again for a similar purpose. Just allow it to cool, then strain the solids out using a fine mesh colander or a colander lined with 100% cotton cheesecloth, be sure to discard those solids, and return the oil to its original bottle. You’ll get many a use out of it that way, though if we were to count the amount that would fry off, let’s call it a half cup, and that would cost us about 36¢ at $4.29 for a bottle containing 96 tablespoons.

Thanks Amy!