Yeeessss, my prayers have been answered: it’s snowing!! I’ve been walking around smiling like an idiot, it’s so incredibly beautiful and fresh and.. ah! I just love it!
Autumn and winter call for warm and hearty meals, which means that I’ve been consuming soups in absolutely ridiculous amounts. A few days ago I did a carrot & tarragon soup with feta cream (I’ll post the recipe later), and I got really excited about the feta cream thingy. I’d made carrot & feta soup before of course, but always had the problem that the feta just didn’t melt properly (no, I didn’t use the low-fat stuff), but stayed in rubbery lumps no matter how much you molested the blender. But as a cream it worked much better, blended in smoothly and as a bonus you had clear flavour contrasts with the sweet soup and salty cream.
I figured this cream thing could be used with all sorts of cheeses, and as my dear parents know so well, I’ve adored blue cheese ever since I was a kid. The smellier and stronger, the better. So what to match that blue cheese with? My first thought was endives or chicory, but they’re so mild in flavour that I’m not that sure how they’d work in a soup. And a big point is their mouthfeel, anyway. From somewhere between the endives and the aniseedy flavour of tarragon in the carrot soup came fennel! My newly found friend celery would go along just perfect, and with the blue cheese cream they would make a perfect threesome. It was heavenly, even if I say so myself.
Oh and one thing I’ve also just recently discovered: puréeing! I don’t mean just with a hand mixer or blender, but passing the whole thing through a sieve after that. I used to think it was just some foppish thing involving extra work phases and more dishes, not to mention throwing away whatever stays in the sieve instead of eating it, but I’ve made a full turn on this matter. The consistency is just SO much smoother and more pleasant, it’s definitely worth the effort. I often have the problem with puréed soups that after eating them for a few days (as you always end up doing, for it is simply impossible to do a soup of just 2–3 servings), they start to feel as baby food in my mouth. Then I get disgusted and feel tempted to just throw the rest away, if there’s still some left. Baby food problem: solved.
So, now finally to the recipe.
Fennel and celery soup with blue cheese cream
Serves 4–5
Soup:
3 small fennels or 2 medium sized fennels, tops trimmed, ends cut and then thinly sliced
4 sprigs celery, chopped
2 onions, chopped
good-quality vegetable broth
1 glass dry white wine
100 gr sour cream
a splash of lemon juice
freshly ground salt and black pepper to taste
Cheese cream:
100 gr strong blue cheese, crumbled (I used Bergader Edelpilz)
100 gr natural organic yoghurt (a low-fat will do, but a completely fat-free version won’t mix well with the soup), or about the same amount of cream
1 tbsp (walnut) oil
water, to thin out
1. Sauté the fennels, celery and onions until tender, season with salt and pepper.
2. Add the white wine and broth, leave to simmer until the veggies are all tender and the alcohol has evaporated.
3. In the meanwhile, make the cheese cream: mix all the ingredients together with a (hand) blender, add just enough water to thin the cream out into... well, a cream. Quite runny but not watery.
4. Purée the veggies as smooth as you can with a (hand) blender. The smoother you make it, the more you can pass through the sieve and the less goes to waste. Then, as said, pass it through a sieve: use a metal sieve with small holes and push the soup through with a ladle (using a little force is allowed). Be sure to scrape the bottom of the sieve! Don’t feel to bad about what little goes unused – I tasted it and surprisingly, it tasted like nothing! Which means that the soup is even more intense in flavour :p~
5. Add the lemon juice and sour cream, and blend it once more to be sure to have a smooth and lean consistency. Check the taste and add salt/pepper/juice/whatever is needed. Bear in mind that the blue cheese cream is very salty!
6. Serve with the cheese cream and roasted walnuts.
Maybe the dullest-looking soup ever. In real life, the colour is a bit greener, though.
And what’s most important, it tastes good!
