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Modern Girl is now mistress of her own domain. www.moderngirlskitchen.com, to be exact.

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(Anyone with experience in "site moving" is welcome to offer assistance.....pretty please....)

It could be the weather, it could be the season, it could be a minor mineral imbalance.

Whatever it is, I've been craving potato soup for a couple of weeks now, even buying potatoes on two occasions with the specific intent of preparing it. The first batch ended up chopped and roasted with olive oil and rosemary on my recent roast chicken spree. The second ended up waiting patiently in the fridge until this evening, when rain, cold and the meteorologist's promise of a "wintry mix" (more like a wishful mix in these parts) prompted me to embark on project potage.

I made some more chicken stock just a couple of days ago and it, along with half an onion, a couple of stalks of celery and a bit of bacon desperately in need of use, was loitering in the fridge just waiting for its chance to dive into a giant pot of creamy potato soup, so I finally had everything I needed to make the thick, creamy, ever-so-slightly chunky potato soup I'd envisioned.

Working from the basic potato soup ingredients (onion, water, stock, milk, potatoes), I've come up with the following recipe - it's another work in process (like the Chicken/Whie Bean Soup I posted recently) - but it's simple, simple, simple - not to mention tasty, filling and a great opportunity to hit the local farmer's market!

As it turns out, this is definitely another one of those great make-ahead-and-freeze dishes - perfect for those nights when you get home from work and it's already dark and you are far too knackered to cook but your only other alternatives are Chinese takeout, pizza delivery or a tasteless frozen dinner that's been in the freezer since two boyfriends ago.

And by the way, some crusty bread from the bakery would make a nice addition, but given the carb count on this (and its thick, filling consistency), you certainly won't miss it if your mind is already on bikini season and you opt to pass. Or if you recently heard a news report suggesting that the average person gains between five and THIRTEEN pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's - in which case you may want to skip the soup entirely and just enjoy the celery on its own.

Note: It looks like there are a lot of ingredients for this, but they're all basics so you shouldn't have to go on a major shopping spree to get the stuff you need. And if you do, well, you'll find these are all "must-have's" for later!

What You Need:

• 8-10 small-medium yellow potatoes, diced (try organic Yukon Gold)
• 8-10 rashers of market bacon, chopped into squares
  
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 1/4 cup celery, sliced
  
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup white wine
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup skim Mayfield milk
• salt
• 1-2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1 tsp. celery salt
• 1 tbsp. whole black pepper
• fresh ground black pepper
• 2 whole bay leaves
  

1. Go ahead and peel & dice your potatoes, chop the onion and celery and cube the bacon slices.
2. Place the diced potatoes into a stockpot or deep saucepan.
   
3. Cook the bacon in a skillet and place it into the pot with the potatoes. Do NOT drain off the fat - you need it to soften the onion.
4. Soften the onion and celery together in the bacon grease -- you'll know they're done when they become transclucent.
5. Add the onion and celery to the bacon and potato in the stockpot, then pour in one cup of chicken stock and three cups of water. Bring to a boil.
6. Simmer the potato mixture until the potatoes are fully cooked and the liquid is reduced by half to three quarters depending on how thick you want your soup.
7. Add celery salt, salt, ground and whole black pepper and bay leaves while mixture is simmering.
8. Stir in the milk.
   
9. Pour a small amount of the reduced mixture into a food processor or blender (liquidiser) and blend until smooth. Pour the blended mixture into a bowl. If you want a chunkier soup, reserve some of the potato pieces in the stockpot.
10. When you've blended all of the soup, return it to the stockpot on medium heat and stir in cheese and cloves. Add more milk to loosen the mixture or small quantities of corn starch to thicken it depending on what you prefer. You can also add more seasoning to taste.

Sensuous, Decadent & Oh So Very Modern

You know the problem. It usually begins around the first of December and spreads like a rampant virus through the very essence of your being, leaving you about as energetic and coherent as a sack of wet gym clothes when it's run its course.

I'm talking (of course) about the holidays. Christmas. Kwanzaa. Hanukkah. Some druidic turn-of-the-year celebration. Whatever you choose to observe, it somehow invariably involves food. And entertaining. And decorating. And often gift-giving. Which brings with it an entirely new set of problems to keep you up at night: to whom do you give a gift? What do you give? Where you get what you give? How do you wrap what you give in the most interesting, unique-yet-festive-and-certainly-not-generic manner? The list goes on.

And despite all efforts to counter-act this annual attack of holiday anxiety - a "phenomenon" widely reported as "news" by our ever-vigilant media (who appear completely unaware of the fact that their time would more usefully be spent reporting stories that demonstrate just how fortunate we are to have such a "problem" in the first place) -- it's virtually inescapable.

Which is precisely why, dear modern girl, I have a perfectly modern solution. Truffles. Yes, that pinnacle of chocolate indulgence, that extravagant bon-bon of a delicacy, that most decorous of all small-sized sweets!

And no, I haven't lost my mind. They are easy - FUN, even - to make - and there's practically no limit to the array of flavours, textures and combinations you can create. Just host a viewing of that gorgeous Juliette Bincoche/Johnny Depp film Chocolat to get you in the mood, then set about creating some chocolate covered magic of your very own.

What You Need

- Two 16oz bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips (the highest quality you can afford - Ghiradelli is ideal)
- Two 8 oz bars of dark, milk or semi-sweet chocolate (again, Ghiradelli is perfect - just make sure it is at least 60%)
-1/2 pint heavy whipping cream
- Two 8oz bars of the highest quality white chocolate you can afford
- "Fillings" like ground almonds or hazelnuts, candied orange peel, crystalized ginger, coconut and glace cherries
- Liqueurs like creme de menthe, creme de cassis or creme de cacao
-Icing for decorating (you can also use more melted chocolate - it depends on how competent you are with a piping bag!
-A cake tester or long, thin skewer
-A double-boiler or two saucepans, one small enough to fit inside the other (this is what I use!)
- A couple of cookie/baking sheets, some wax paper and, if you want to get fancy, a couple of silicone ice cube trays in different shapes (like hearts or shells).
- A few small mixing bowls (cereal bowls also work well)

What You Do

1. Just fill your large saucepan about half full of water and bring it to a boil (or simply fill your double-boiler and get it going). Place the smaller saucepan inside the larger one doing your best not to let it touch the water (at the very least, it should touch only minimally).
   
2. Put 1 bag of the milk chocolate chips into the small pan along with a drop of cream to help the chocolate loosen and melt. It is very important to remember that it is far easier to make the chocolate more liquid than it is to make it more solid! Aim to get the chocolate loose and smooth with the consistency of a thick milkshake.
3. Place one of your "fillings" in a small mixing bowl - 1/2 a cup full of crushed hazelnuts, for example, or 1/2 a cup of shredded coconut and some chopped glace cherries.
4. Add a few tablespoons of melted chocolate to the filling. Think of the chocolate as the "glue" that will pull the filling together -- in other words, the ratio should be about 2 parts filling to one part chocolate. The mixture should come together quickly and easily into a small ball, much like dough. Don't freak out, give up and eat it all if you don't succeed with this at first -- although that's always a tempting alternative -- instead, just keep adding small amounts of filling until it thickens up.
5. Now you have a choice: you can either form the mixture into small balls with your hands (use 1 tablespoon, roughly) and place them on a baking sheet lined with wax paper, or you can fill the cavities of a silicone ice cube tray with the mixture (this will help you to form the truffles into decorative shapes like hearts, shells, pears, even penguins if you're so inclined -- of if that's the only ice cube tray in the freezer).
6. Place the tray or baking sheet in the refrigerator for a few minutes until the chocolate sets.
7. In the meantime, take another small, clean, dry saucepan, place broken up pieces of the solid chocolate bars (either white or dark) into it and melt it over the double-boiler. Because this is a higher percentage/quality chocolate than the chocolate chips, this chocolate will melt a lot faster and will have a much more velvety-smooth consistency. You should NOT add cream to this chocolate.
8. Remove your trays from the fridge. If you're using ice cube molds, pop the chocolates out from the cavities. Skewer each one and gently dip it into the chocolate you've just melted, turning carefully to ensure full coverage.
   
9. 
   
10. 
11. Gently place the truffle on a waiting sheet of wax paper to set.
12. Decorate by piping melted chocolate over the top (use white chocolate on dark and vice-versa), or use small pieces of nuts, ginger or swirls of colored icing -- the sky's the limit.
13. Place in miniature cupcake cups, arrange in a small gift box or my favorite, a red Chinese takeout carton. Give these as gifts to friends and co-workers (if they're really, really good friends, pair them with a good bottle of red wine for the ultimate in modern girl gift-giving chic).
    

In addition to re-publishing the post prior to this one (Thanks, But No Thanks), I thought it wise - and timely - to offer an update. After all, what modern girl among us is not caught up to one degree or another in the pursuit of elusive perfection, whether in terms of appearance, physique, demeanour, career performance, culinary prowess (especially, perhaps, culinary prowess!) or all of the above. Admit it or not, you want it. It's hard not to.

The desire to achieve perfection - to become flawless, peerless, matchless, dauntless - sneaks up on us. It weaves and winds itself through our lives, slipping between magazine imprints and media airwaves, insinuating itself into our interactions with others; it slides between the sheets with us at night, whispering in our ear...Tomorrow! Tomorrow I will make an Italian Creme Cake that is perfectly level, perfectly moist, perfectly perfect...

And while it's a voice we can so often quell during most of the year, there's something about the holidays that makes us acutely aware of its presence. Something about the pressure of this one day - this Thanksgiving, this Christmas, this Hanukah, this New Year's Eve - that forces us to succumb to otherwise latent ambition. Forget the fact that you can hardly cook a hotdog the rest of the year, you're plucking, stuffing and sauteing your own special-ordered, $50-a-pound heirloom heritage turkey this year by god. And when you do, it's going to be better looking and better tasting than any turkey that's ever graced all the covers of Living, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Apetite, Cook's Illustrated, Cooking Light, Oprah and Real Simple put together. Period. After all, that's what the holidays are about, right? If we can't have a perfect meal with our perfect family, well then, it we won't enjoy it and we certainly won't be happy.

Or will we? What's so wrong with a little imperfection? What's so wrong with a few under-done vegetables, an over-cooked bird and a wonky cake? And will our worlds fall to pieces if our families aren't smiling 100% of the time and the dog eats half the pecan pie when you're not looking (true story, another time)? Probably not.

Probably, they'll be a hell of a lot happier that way. Because as T.S. Eliot explains in one of my favorite essays, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," true art lies not in perfect imitation, but in allowing your own unique characteristics, experiences and values to express themselves through the creation of something that both follows tradition and departs from it at the same time. The same can be said of cooking -- especially of preparing an important dish or celebratory meal. It's not about pedantic recipe obeisance; it's about letting go of the fear of imperfection and embracing, instead, the possibility that a few "flaws" could (gasp) actually be better.

I learned this last Christmas as my then future in-laws arrived to spend the holidays with my family. It was, in many ways, an amazingly happy and exciting time. It was also the singlemost stressful holiday of my entire life. The lurking - and at the time I thought "healthy" - "respect" (read: fear & intimidation) I felt for my Swiss future mother-in-law drove me to try to deliver the most picture-perfect meals and baked goods I could provide -- at the expense of some of my sanity and some of the harmony between me and my former fiance. The thing is (and this is the thing I forgot), she wasn't there for the food. (Turns out she wasn't really there for me, either, but that's another story). And while the holiday was certainly memorable, what I recall most is the nagging pressure not to put a foot wrong. To dress immaculately. To make sure my house was spotless. To make sure that the food I prepared was beyond reproach in texture, taste, seasoning, appearance.

The end of my engagement came six months later, not through any fault of my own and not, I hasten to add, as a result of that holiday. But as I approach this holiday season, it is with a set of new eyes. There will be no rush this year. No hustle and bustle, no mad decorating or over-production of more baked goods than any one person can dispose of (no matter how many book clubs and supper clubs she's in); no worrying about future in-laws (or fiances or boyfriends, for that matter). No worrying about gifts - my parents, sister, brother-in-law and I are spending the holidays in England and foregoing gifts of "things" in lieu of the gift of time together.

I won't fib here and say that this year has not "aged" my thirty-one year-old self in some ways. It has. And I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that, on the eve of Thanksgiving, I can't help but think back to the excitement of last year, to the not-yet-engaged-but-almost excitement of being with the person I thought I'd spend my life with. That some part of me does still wish she could go back and do it all again - hopefully with a happier outcome this time.

But if I did do it all again, one thing is certain. I wouldn't worry about my profiterole's "puff quotient" quite so much. Or whether the fondue was as authentically Swiss in flavor and consistency as it could be. Or whether my house was decorated like something out of the pages of House & Garden. Much like lasting relationships, these things either happen or they don't, and not usually by force. Or our own hellbent design. And when they don't, it doesn't mean that something is wrong, that you aren't worthy or valued or important or talented. It simply means that you are fortunate enough to have discovered what it means to be alive. And that is perfection all by itself.