Plenty of soup for you

I do not think of myself as a lover of soup. As a rule. It doesn't feature on my desert island list. It's not one of the foods I daydream about while camping in the backcountry. It wasn't one of the things I doodled, salivating, with a pencil and paper, when I had my wisdom teeth and tonsils out (separate incidents; perhaps because it is one of the only things you're allowed to eat when you've had those particular body parts yanked out).

But something happened tonight - something with roots stretching back into the beginning of the week, when I surveyed the contents of my refrigerator and tried to figure out what to do with the odds and ends left over from meals gone by. (It's a perpetual problem; especially when dealing with buttermilk. Who ever uses the whole carton without some serious, frantic, pre-expiry-date recipe searching?) In any case, something happened. I had to make buttermilk biscuits, and I found myself planning to make soup to go along with them. And not to spoil the ending for you, but clearly I don't know myself that well at all. I really, really liked this soup. It also reminded me of other soups I adore, and which I only have a month or so left to make before the Ottawa summer sets in (optimistic, je sais) and barbecue becomes the only realistic means of preparing food.

Anyway. You need a diversion from the soup so LOOKATTHESEBISCUITS! They are... well... perfect. I love them. I think you should make them, say, tomorrow. I've served them with chili, turkey stew, jambalaya, chowder and all alone for lunch. They're the ideal mix of salty and sweet, with a kick of onion and the tang of buttermilk, all packed into one fluffy, moist little circle. Tonight, Brian made them, because I was too busy chopping and slicing and simmering and sauteeing, and I will say it with pride: the man can bake. (If you make them, don't skimp on the sea salt on top. Just ask my dad.)

But the soup was so good, it was hard to decide whether to take a bite of biscuit or a slurp of soup (so very hard! The humanity!). You should probably make it too. You'll like it because it's earthy, with precisely the right broth:chunks ratio. And you might just fall in love with dried porcini mushrooms, which I did, about a year ago.

Now. What am I going to do with the dark green parts of those leeks? Seriously. One billion dollars to the person who comes up with a truly delicious and worthwhile recipe that uses the part of the leek nobody else has the huevos to do something about.