Potato soup with bacon and Havarti

Basically any recipe that includes the phrase "with bacon" stands a fighting chance.

Cold Weather Potato Chowder with Caraway Cheese

Adapted from “Sunday Soups” by Betty Rosbottom, a book with a year’s worth of potential Sunday evening soups. Or lunches, which is what this turned into.

Ingredients:

4 slices bacon, chopped into ½-inch pieces

½ cup chopped onion

½ cup chopped celery

1 pound red-skin potatoes, unpeeled, cut into ½-inch pieces

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups whole milk

1 teaspoon caraway

1 cup grated Havarti cheese

1 tablespoon butter, softened

1 tablespoon flour

Chives for garnish

Method:

Cook bacon in large heavy pot until crisp. Remove from pan and set aside. Add olive oil to drippings as needed to make up 2 tablespoons. Add onions and celery and sauté until softened. Add potatoes and cook for 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook for one minute.

Stir in broth, milk and caraway seeds. Cook at low temperature to avoid boiling and curdling for 20-30 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

Add cheese to soup a handful at a time, stirring to melt. Mix softened butter and flour in a small bowl to make a paste. Stir in some of the soup liquid a bit at a time until blended, then stir mixture into soup. Return bacon to pan. Serve topped with snipped fresh chives.

The rating: Fine. Hard to go wrong with those flavors.

Make-ahead tip: The original recipe calls for cooking the soup through the stage where the potatoes are tender, then reheating to add the cheese and roux. However, this worked well enough as fully made soup as leftovers.

Sides: I tried a new recipe for beer biscuits from “The Soup & Bread Cookbook” by Beatrice Ojakangas as reprinted in the Taste section. They were slightly darker than regular biscuits and a perfectly adequate carrier for butter, but I don’t feel compelled to make the recipe again so I won’t share it here.