Cosy baked potato and prosciutto soup and my sister and my cookbook addiction story...

Every year for my birthday I can expect at least one cookbook.  If no one buys me one, inevitably, I receive money with which I buy one.   One of my sisters and I are the bakers of our family and regularly buy each other cookbooks - and many times over the years we've found a cookbook we'd really like to buy ourselves. We tell each other how close we came to keeping it for ourselves, and then promise to buy it for the other one for their next birthday or Christmas. This is what happened this year when my sister bought this book for me!  That makes one less present I have to search for this year - hoorah!

And I can see why she loves it  - It's called '3 sisters bake' the title is enough to draw both of us in - we are 2 of three sisters (our other sister isn't really a baker but she's a very good cook!) and both of us have three daughters.   So apart from the title, there's some fabulous recipes in there which this one is adapted from.

The original recipe calls for bacon, but I only had short-cut bacon which wouldn't have done the job as it does need that crispy-rind/rendered fat taste and I also substituted leek for onion to balance out the strength of the prosciutto

The real difference between this and most potato soups is that there's no cream but it has a creamy consistency - the taste is distinct also because the potatoes are baked and not boiled, it's a deeper flavour and that's also what helps give that creamy consistency..

Ingredients

1 kg potatoes

3 tb olive oil

Sea salt

3 inches of leek, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic

2 tsp white pepper

2 litres milk

6 rashers streaky bacon or prosciutto

Method

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

Place potatoes on tray and prick a few times with a fork (will help the steam escape whilst they cook) and then sprinkle with olive oil and sea salt

Bake for one hour, but 20 minutes before the end, place your prosciutto into a baking dish and place in the oven for that last 20 minutes.

Then bring them all out to cool Whilst you get started on the other bits..

 Like heating oil in your large pot, add leeks and garlic and cook until soft.  then add your milk and turn down to a simmer...

Cut your potatoes in half and peel the skins off.  If you leave the skins on you'll get a gritty soup and no one likes that!

Chop up half your prosciutto and add it to the pot with the white pepper.  Then add your potatoes.

Pop the lid on and leave to simmer for about 20-30 minutes.

Then either put it through a food process or use a stick blender to mix it through.

Simmer until you're ready the serve!

 Serve with the other half of your prosciutto sprinkled on top

Whilst I was eating this I realised the perfect accompaniment would be my sweet onion Turkish bread, you could whip that up in the time it takes to make this too!

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