Provençal Potato Soup with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Olives

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Potato soup doesn’t necessarily sound like a culinary firework, but this soup has a great twist thanks to the Mediterranean ingredients.

With a few herbs and some olives and dried tomatoes, the rather boring soup becomes an interesting meal. I love this soup from Provence, especially in winter, because it offers a bit of summer freshness and a cosy warmth in the belly. Olives and sun-dried tomatoes are readily available all year round. And the best of all, the soup is ready to serve in half an hour!

The recipe is originally from Suppengrün, a great soup restaurant in Constance. When I was a student, you could buy a cookbook there that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else since. You can find another recipe from the same cookbook and some memories of the restaurant in the article on bulgur soup with red lentils.

Recipe #

Provençal Potato Soup with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Olives

30 minutes

2 portions

Ingredients #

• 400 g potatoes
• 1 onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 teaspoon dried vegetable stock
• 300 ml water
• 65 g white wine
• 1.5 teaspoons dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon honey
• 1 pinch of sweet paprika
• 1 pinch of pepper
• 65 g single cream
• 65 g feta cheese
• 1 pinch of salt
• 50 g black olives
• 50 g dried tomatoes

Directions #

1. Peel and chop the potatoes, onion and garlic.
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and sauté the potato and onion cubes. After about 3 minutes, add the diced garlic and sauté. Add the white wine and water and bring to the boil.
3. Add the dried vegetable stock, thyme, honey, paprika and pepper. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.
4. While the soup is simmering, cut the feta cheese into large cubes. Slice the dried tomatoes and olives.
5. When the potatoes are soft (test with a fork!), turn off the heat, add the cream and diced feta cheese and purée the soup. Season to taste with salt.
6. Serve the soup with the diced olives and tomatoes.

Carbon Footprint #

In total, two portions of the potato soup from Provence with olives and sun-dried tomatoes have an estimated carbon footprint of 1383 g.

This ranks it number 22 out of 53 recipes published on the blog so far in terms of estimated carbon footprint.

The carbon footprint of this recipe is therefore very similar to the Curry Lentil Balls (1386 g CO₂) or the Red Lentil Balls with Walnuts (1289 g CO₂).

Looking at the individual ingredients, cream and sheep’s cheese stand out: These two ingredients account for more than half of the recipe’s greenhouse gas footprint, even though they make up only about 12% of the ingredients’ weight. The opposite is true for potatoes: They make up more than a third of the weight of the ingredients, but only about 6% of the emissions. Dried tomatoes are an interesting case: their poor CO2 balance is mainly due to processing and the relatively high water content of the tomatoes, which has to be removed. If the dried tomatoes were removed from the recipe, it would be in the top 25% of recipes published to date with the lowest emissions.

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