Soup challenge -- chunky celery soup

 

Now before you go all bananas on how disgusting celery is (as an ardent celery hating child myself), I have been pleasantly surprised at how well it complements (and is vital because of it's slightly peppery flavour) certain dishes. Having made bolognaise ragu earlier in the week which required all of 2 celery stalks, the rest of the stems and leaves sat wilting sadly in my fridge. As temperatures dipped below 10 this week, I was really longing for a thick hearty soup, none of this broth business that us Asians are used to. It made me think of the chunky soup series by Heinz, of which one of my favourites was the bacon and potato soup. yums. 

Anyway, I digress. This can be winged out very quickly, with or without bacon, and deals with the underabsorption of ingredients from previous meals (sorry i am actually studying for an exam now!)

The base is somewhat similar to that of the carrot and coriander soup I made last week (I realise that alot of the ingredients used in potages here are pretty much a standard set, of course, knowing as well which veges complement which herbs.)

So again, 1 white onion and 1 clove of garlic finely diced, drizzle of olive oil and butter (about 1 tsp) in a pan over low heat until onions are translucent, scrape outer layer of celery if you don't like the fibrous bits and chop up finely. Reserve leaves on the side for garnish. Sweat everything together for 8 minutes with a bay leaf and one finely diced large potato. add a glass of dry white wine (or enough to just cover the veges). Reduce for 10 minutes to allow the alchohol to evaporate. Add 3 cups of home made chicken stock. sprinkle over 1 tsp of nutmeg and bring to minimum heat cook. Go do something for 30 minutes.

Stir in 1/2 cup whole milk (DO NOT BOIL SOUP VIGOUROUSLY) and either (1) puree with hand blender (again only when soup has cooled to room temperature or risk an exploding mess in the kitchen) or (2) mash up with manual potato masher. This gives it a chunkiness which I like. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This was served with a heap of home made croutons which was simply yesterday's pasty white baguette roll cut up into 0.5 cm cubes , dressed with olive oil and pepper, and tanned in a preheated oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown at 180C.

As a treat, you can also fry up bits of bacon until brown and crisp and drain on kitchen paper.

To assemble, spoon up soup, drop croutons and crumble bacon into soup. Garnish with reserved celery leaves (and parsley for a nice deep green colour). I omitted bacon this time but dressed it up with mom's fried shallots and freshly milled black pepper. I know it might not look like the fanciest soup  in the photo above being a rather sad pale green colour, but it made me a very happy camper last night. :)

xx