I recently started a vegan chef culinary program with Natural Kitchen Cooking School in my beloved former state of New Jersey. One of our homework assignments for the month was to make a recipe out of You Won’t Believe It’s Vegan! by Lacey Sher and Gail Doherty, former owners of New Jersey’s first organic vegan restaurant, Down to Earth (which was located in Red Bank and is now defunct).

Since I had most of the ingredients on hand from my CSA share for the week, I decided to make the Potato-Leek Soup with Lemon & Dill with some minor changes. A modified version of the recipe can be found at Kahakai Kitchen’s blog. For my version, I did not have any celery, so I replaced it with 5 carrots sliced thinly. I also did not have fresh dill, so I just sprinkled on dried dill. I served it with baguette slices and a green salad.

My husband and I really enjoyed the soup and found it very tasty. Garnishing the soup with crispy leeks and a lemon slice was a nice touch and gave the soup an added kick of flavor and texture. I would definitely make the meal again, perhaps as a nice starter for a fancy meal with friends.

Overall, we’d rate this dish a strong 4 out of 5 carrots on the veganlicious scale!