In Food: Leek - Sesame Soup at Gartine, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Ok, Gartine is probably my favourite place in the Netherlands right now, let alone Amsterdam. Amazing, delicate brunch, amazing, delicious high-tea, best jam that you can buy all around. Today, I had a Leek - Sesame soup for high tea, which was … too die for. It had a creamy texture with very subtle green flavours. 

So, I tried to replicate it. It wasn't a success, in the sense of it being the same, but for an experiment, it was still pretty good. Here's my recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 leeks, the white and light green parts washed & chopped
• about 4 large potatoes
• a thumb of ginger (you can omit this, it's too strong a flavour)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• slightly more than a teaspoon of dill
• (lemon) salt & pepper
• vegetable bouillon about 2 cups
• ca. 1/5 cup (2 table spoons) of sesame seeds
• half a cup of cream - semi-skimmed
• a table spoon of mustard

Steps:

1. I started with frying the leeks in the pan, for about 2 min, or until they turned very slightly brown
2. I then added the potatoes, (skip the) ginger, garlic, dill, salt, pepper, and bouillon.
3. Let the whole thing simmer for ca. 20 min or until the potato is tender enough
4. After 20 min, add the sesame seeds and cream (I actually fried the sesame seeds just prior to this, without oil, in a pan)
5. I added the mustard for flavour
6. Food process the whole thing, but not too strong, make it rough in texture.

Voila. It was delicious, would've been better without the ginger, but I'm happy with the attempt. PS, did I mention that you should visit Gartine? :)