Serves 4 to 6 as main meal or 8 to 10 as appetizer soup

Ingredients
10 cups chicken or vegetable stock
4 large white or yellow potatoes, peeled and chopped into chunks
12 cloves garlic, smashed
4 shallots
8 Chinese broccoli stalks, ends trimmed and cut into 3 inch pieces
4 cups milk
2 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
White pepper to taste
Fried garlic to garnish
Chopped scallions to garnish
Cilantro to garnish

Method

In a large pot, bring the stock to a vigorous boil.   Add the potato chunks, garlic and shallots, boiling for about 10 to 15 minutes until the potatoes are fork tender.

Add the Chinese broccoli and milk, stirring gently and bringing back to a boil. Once the soup has come back to a boil, lower the heat to medium. If you have a hand held blender, you can use that to purée the soup. Otherwise, ladle the potato, Chinese broccoli, garlic, shallots and a bit of liquid into a blender to purée. You will have to do this in several batches to avoid overloading the blender. Be careful not to fill the blender more than half full with hot liquid as the heat will sometimes cause the top of the blender to fly off. Return the puréed soup into the pot.

Once the entire soup has been puréed, add the butter, salt, nutmeg and white pepper, stirring gently until thoroughly combined. Ladle into serving bowls and garnish with an assortment of fried garlic, scallions and cilantro.