Vichyssoise with Chilies

Like a traditional vichyssoise, but with a kick.

Ingredients

• 1 yellow onion, chopped
  
• 3 leeks, MOST of the green parts cut off, and washed
  
• 2 bigish russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
  
• 5c water
  
• 2tbsp unsalted butter
  
• 4c 2% milk (or something equivalent in fat content)
  
• 3 jalapeño peppers, roasted (char the skins under the broiler for 15-20 min, then when they cool pull the skin off, cut and take out the seeds and membranes)
  
• salt to taste (probably about 3-4tsp)
  

Saute the onions and leeks with the butter. When the onions / leeks are soft, add the potatoes and water and about 2tsp salt. Bring it to a boil, and then simmer it until the potatoes are quite soft. Add the milk, and bring back to a boil. Now blend the soup along with the peppers (probably working in batches unless you have one hell of a big blender). Taste. Add salt until it's right. Mine took quite a bit. You're supposed to eat it chilled, but I served it warm because it's winter and we were impatient. But there's a lot left over. Garnish with chives.

Thoughts: Very nice taste, but not very thick. It would probably benefit from being chilled, so we'll see how that goes. The hotness wasn't overpowering. In the future, I'd like to do this with chipotles and see how that goes. Probably I should use heavy cream or half and half instead of 2%, but I don't really know. If I were doing a traditional vichyssoise, I'm sure I would.

Disaster Index: 1/10