Week 47 - Czech

I searched Czech recipes for a long time before seeing one I wanted to make - a Czech garlic soup (or česnečka) that I found on About's Eastern European food site. It sounded really good, simple but healing, and perfect for a cool fall night.

The ingredients for the soup (slightly adapted from the original) were:

- 1 tbsp butter ($0.15)
- 1 large onion, chopped ($0.50)
- 1 head of garlic, 3 cloves crushed, the rest chopped ($0.34)
- 6 cups of water ($0)
- 3 spoonfuls of chicken bouillon ($0.65)
- 5 potatoes (equivalent of 3 medium potatoes or thereabouts), chopped ($1)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- parsley for garnish ($0.20)
- 1 bag of cheese and garlic croutons ($2.99)

The cost for the soup was about $5.88. We ate it with some panko chicken, but even including that, the total for dinner was well under $10. Always happy to see that.

The soup was really simple to make, just a little bit of prep and then however long it took for the broth to boil and the potatoes to soften. The steps were:

- melt butter
- cook onions and chopped garlic until softened
- add water and bouillon
- bring to boil
- add potatoes, salt and pepper
- simmer over low heat until potatoes are fork tender
- add crushed garlic
- cook for a couple more minutes
- ladle into bowls, add parsley for garnish (not really necessary but we had some parsley that I didn't want to waste), and top with croutons

Really, really simple, but lots of flavor.

This soup was so good. Loved the strong garlic flavor, as that made it feel really restorative. It had a lot of flavor just from the chicken broth and the simple ingredients. Very happy with this, and it was easy for the two of us to finish off the entire pot of soup since outside of the croutons and potatoes, it was really just broth. The crispy chicken tasted good dipped into the broth too. After a week of doing cooking challenges almost every day, it was nice to end with something so easy but so good.