Asparagus soup

katienotinnola

Jul 30

In answer to the question, what else can you do with asparagus after roasted plain, roasted adorned, steamed, stir-fried and stirred into rice dishes, there's soup. Very nice soup, in this case accompanied by cheesy crackers that some together pretty much in sync with the soup. I made this soup the week after I made the strawberry ice cream (knee deep in fresh and local) and so I was able to use some of the leftover heavy cream in the soup. I could pat myself on the back for being a thrifty cook, but that would be wrong. This recipe is from the food & wine website, and I tinkered with it a bit.

The ingredients for the crackers:

1-1/2 cups all purpose flour;

1-1/2 cups grated parmesan (I did not grate it myself, but I used imported from the Co-op);

1 teaspoon dried thyme (only I pulled a bottle from that part of my alphabetized spice collection and it turned out to be sage. Worked fine.);

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest;

1-1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) butter;

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, unless you are using unsalted butter, in which case 1 teaspoon; and

2 egg yolks.

These things are all on the right side of the picture, with the pepper mill that belongs on the other side with the soup ingredients.

The ingredients for the soup:

1-1/2 lbs. asparagus cleaned and cut into 1" pieces, which worked out to about 3-1/2 cups of pieces;

1 cup diced onion;

2 tablespoons butter;

1 quart chicken stock or better than boullion to make that much;

1/4 cup fresh tarragon leaves;

1 cup heavy cream; and

salt, pepper and lemon zest to taste.

I started with the crackers, which needed to chill for a while. I put the flour and grated cheese in the work bowl of the mixer and added the thyme (or in my case sage) and some salt. Then I zested the lemon over the work bowl so as to get as much of the goodness as possible into the bowl.

I turned the mixer on for less than a minute to combine the ingredients in the bowl.

Then I cut all of the butter into little cubes and tossed it in along with the egg yolks.

This is kind of like making shortbread, except for the cheese and the sage and the eggs. Maybe not so like, but in both cases, it is better to have the butter working its way toward soft, to facilitate making a dough.

I ran the mixer on low to break up the butter and eggs. When the mixture looked a bit clumpy, I took out a piece of plastic wrap and plopped about half of the mixture onto it. I then mushed the mixture around with my hands to form a log of maybe 2" in diameter and

6" in length. I wrapped it up, put it in the refrigerator and did the same with the other half of the mixture.

None of this is pictured, but below there is a picture of me cutting one of the logs into slices.

I turned my attention to the soup. I melted the butter in a Dutch oven and diced the onion.

Dutch oven with melting butter and onion.

I turned the oven on to 325 degrees in anticipation of the crackers.

While the onion was cooking over medium heat (to soften not brown), I cleaned and cut the asparagus. I am of the snap-the-asparagus-where-it-breaks school, as opposed to the cut-the-bottom-inch-or-so-off-all-the-stalks school. I have found the cut-the-bottom approach can leave a fair amount of woody stem. I break the spears where they break, which is not always the same place on each stalk

Then I rinsed and chopped the asparagus and when the onion was soft, I added the asparagus. I did not have chicken stock so I added better than bouillon paste to the vegetables, let it cook for a few minutes (scraping the stuck-on bits up) and then added a quart of water.

I let these ingredients come to a boil, then turned the heat down to simmer.

While the soup was simmering, I used a serrated knife to cut each log into about 1/4" slices, which I arranged on silpat-covered rimmed baking sheets (cheese sticks to stuff).

I baked the crackers for about 20 minutes until they looked set and golden around the edges.

I let the crackers cool (and set) on the baking sheets and then moved them to cooling racks.

Meanwhile, the asparagus had softened in the pot. I thought I could use a stick blender to make a smooth soup. I was wrong. Asparagus is too fibrous, even when cooked to the point of extreme doneness.

So I switched gears and got out the blender. I put a couple of cups of hot soup in the blender at a time. I held the top down with a towel because there is an eruptive quality to hot soup in a blender. As each batch got smooth, I dumped it into a soupd tureen. It did not take long (maybe 3 batches) so the soup stayed hot.

After the soup was all blended and in the tureen, I stirred in the heavy cream, added some salt and pepper to taste along with a bit of lemon zest and a handful of tarragon leaves.

On the table! I don't know why the tarragon drifted to one side of the tureen. Maybe the house is sinking. The crackers were still warm and a bit soft - they crisped up on the second day. Soft or crisp the crackers were cheesy and rich. The soup was delicious.

We had salad and berries and yogurt, as we often do.

Philip had soup a day or two later for lunch, cold. He said it was delicious cold too.

Vegetable soups (including potato or mushroom) are a nice change from meat-based or bean-based soups. Now the question is, what else can you do with asparagus?

A final note - the recipe called for the addition of "1/2 cup frozen baby peas, thawed" at the end at the time the cream is added. My views on peas, baby or adult, are well-known. I omitted them. If you like peas, feel free to add them.

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