Sunday, February 26, 2012

Roasted Cauliflower Soup


I got real good at making a variety of soups for my clients in NYC.  I made a new soup with every meal for my clients.  They is a basic way to start every soup it seems, and the balance/ratio of is important but really is entirely up to your tastes.  How do you like your soup?
I had a super leek left over from the other night and used this and about a 1/4 of a small onion + a 1/2 stalk of celery to get this base going in some olive oil.  I got the olive oil going with several whole garlic cloves while I course chopped.
I have been seasoning almost exclusively with smoked sea salts...  I used alderwood in this.  It add's depth and I live a hint of smoke in all of my food.  I also got some Durango Hickory smoked salt I use on my meats...  I made a spice mix using piquin and habanero peppers that will make anybody's bloody mary sing.  Recipe coming soon.  I digress.
While the leeks were slow sweating I set the convection oven to high (about 400) and arranged the cut cauliflower (one head is enough) on a round pan and liberally covered it with olive oil and seasoned with my salt and pepper.
When you can smell it and it looks a little brown almost burned on the outside it is done.  There will be a bunch of juice left in the pan.  use it.
About 1/4 cup of nice white wine is nice when the leek mixture is sweated down...  I had some left over chicken stock, about a qt.  I and added that next, followed by my roasted cauliflower. The flavor changes tremendously compared to just cooking the raw cauliflower in the soup...  but that can be nice too.  The raw will make your soup white.  Roasted it had an off white color.
this cooks for another 20 minutes or so before getting out your hand blander and pureé away.  I like teh swiss made Bamix.  It's about 150 bucks from williams-sonoma.  I use this thing everyday.  It purees as good as any blender, quickly.  It's steel body will keep it from getting damaged in hot liquid and could rip up some shrimp shells which I need to do from time to time.  It's easy to clean too.
Just prior to the puree I add about a 1/4 cup of cream.  The soup is pretty much done here.  You want ot let it rest on a simmer for another 15 minutes and season to taste.  I added a touch of nutmeg here and before serving garnished with some scallions.
Like most soups, this soup is even better the next day.  

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