Winter = soup. I already made vegi beef soup (on a previous post). Today I made Cauliflower soup. I used one of my favorite tricks. I bought the mirpoux at Trader Joe's. Mirpoux is the start of every great soup - onions, celery and carrots. They had a container of all three vegis cut up - 1 cup of each. If I can't get to Trader Joe's, I get the cut up vegis from salad bars. It helps to speed it all up, it doesn't cost much more than buying each vegi separate. When you buy each vegetable separate, you have to get a bunch each of carrots and celery, so it usually goes to waste in my house, as I hate wasting food.
I roast the cauliflower in the over. While that is roasting, I saute the mirpoux. I like to get some color on the vegis, just a bit of browning. This just adds to the depth of the flavor. Once the cauliflower is soft and roasted, I add it into the pot, along with chicken stock, garlic, salt, pepper and bay leaves. Let everything cook together about 30 minutes. To this pot, I also added some curry - just to see if we would like this.
After the 30 minutes, I shooshed it with my stick blender. I just got a more powerful one from William Sonoma. It was on sale. The blender I had before was 250 watts. It never really got my soups smooth. This new one is 600 watts....and yes, it is smooth. No cream added = no fat added. When you puree vegis to this degree, I have found there is no need to add cream to make it smooth and lush.
To try to kick my meals up to the next level, I tried something new. While the soup was cooking, I used the vegi peeler and made some slices of sweet potato and thinly cut some shallots. I put them on non-stick aluminum foil and sprayed them both with Pam. I sprinkled some of the curry powder of them as well. I put them in the hot oven after the cauliflower had roasted. Watch them closely so they don't burn. I took them out and let them cool. They were nice and crispy. We sprinkled them on the soup right before eating it. Nice contrast to the smooth soup!!
No comments:
Post a Comment