Beany Malone: St. Patrick's Day Feast

My heritage is nearly entirely Irish with just a sprinkling of German. Growing up, my parents would eat corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day while my siblings and I looked on in disgust. I was not an adventurous eater and only started trying new foods as a teenager. I never became a huge fan of corned beef and cabbage, but I have always been a huge fan of potatoes. All of my ancestors came to America (including the German ones) during potato famines. Go figure. Tonight, I decided to make potato, broccoli, cheese soup. Potatoes to represent my Irish passion for these root vegetables, broccoli for a little bit of green, and cheese because... well... because I adore cheese.

Pot of Soup

I sort of improvised the soup as follows:

Cook one chopped onion and two minced garlic cloves in butter
Add 1/4 cup flour, a dash of paprika, salt, pepper, & nutmeg
Mix well
Add 4 cups of chicken stock
Add 2 cups of milk (I used 1%, but I don't think it matters)
Add about 5 peeled and chopped potatoes, 5 peeled & cut carrots, & a bag of frozen broccoli
Add some more salt and pepper
Cook for 30 minutes
Add about 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh parsley (more green for St. Patrick's Day & fresh flavor)
Simmer another 15 minutes
Let sit for 10 minutes
Use immersion blender to blend until smooth
Put back on low heat and add 2 cups of grated cheese (I used cheddar, comte, & bit of parmesan)

As the soup was simmering, I started to worry about the lack of warm bread to go with it. Most of the dinner roll recipes online required at least two hours and huge quantities of sugar (which we are almost completely out of). I found a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website for "Big Batch Quick Dinner Rolls." Click here for the recipe. Since there are only two of us, and the recipe was for 24 rolls - holy cow- I halved it.