Asparagus Soup
How profligate, I hear you cry. Taking something which is delicate, delicious and downright dear, and turning it into soup? Nay, best beloveds, nay. Imparting culinary knowledge to my bambini has always been a source of pleasure, never more so than when it related to today's star veg. Having been asked how far down one should cut an asparagus stalk, I delighted in demonstrating the break test.
Buying his wand at Ollivander's in Diagon Alley, Harry Potter was told that the wand chooses the owner. Likewise the asparagus stalk knows how long it should be. Simply hold one in both hands and bend. It will break with a satisfying snap. You have your tender spear of precisely the right length. But what do you do with the coarser, woody part?
No! Please tell me that isn't so. And if you did it recently, go and raid your veg bin now. Because you have just chucked away the ingredient for a rather lovely soup. You may well be buying only one pack of asparagus at a time. Mattereth not, as you can keep the stalks in the fridge for a while. I had three packs in total. At this time of year the British stuff is expensive, and sold in quite small quantities, yielding about 25 - 30 stalk ends. Enough for a good potful. I've never measured anything for this soup. If you're using cream (which I don't), be careful not to drown it. The flavour is delicate.
Ingredients
About 25 asparagus stalk ends; 1 medium onion, chopped; 1 stalk of celery (optional) peeled and finely chopped; 1 medium potato, very finely diced; about 600 - 700 ml chicken stock; double cream (optional); butter; olive oil; s & p.
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Cut the asparagus bits into 1cm pieces. Gently sweat the onion and celery in a mixture of butter and oil. After a few minutes add the potato and cook until the veg are soft. Add the asparagus pieces and fry for a further 2 - 3 minutes. Make sure the veg don't stick. Season a little at this stage.
Pour in the stock and simmer until the asparagus bits are tender. Allow to cool slightly then liquidise. I find the veg are a bit too tough for a hand blender and go the full Magimix here. Then push the mixture through a fine sieve and return the soup to a (clean) pan. Check the seasoning. If you're using cream, warm the soup up and add at this stage, checking your seasoning once again.
When serving feel inflated pride at the fact that many eejits will have thrown the ingredients away.
What a super recipe thanks – I usually just add these bits to a veg stock. Tom, you are a genius!
It makes a very thin soup. I sometimes wonder if I should do a second cook with the potato after the first blitz. You’re not going to keep a vibrant green colour, but it does taste really nice.
Nice one. Thanks. To give the soup a nice dusty-emerald hue, boil/steam the asparagus separately, refresh in iced water and retain, then add to the soup mixture just before pulverising the lot. A handful of petit pois thrown in at the last stages of cooking the asparagus (and refreshed with them) will enhance the colour, if not the flavour, further.
On the basis that you are using the rough ends, I’m not sure you would get the flavour. It would certainly be the classic way to make this if using the spears themselves. By coincidence I recently sampled a pea and asparagus soup. Nice combination.
The trick is to boil the snapped-off ends in small amount of water (just to cover), then add the resulted stock to the soup. The really-really woody end bits (tough enough to make inexpensive furniture from) have no flavour anyhow and are no good for anything but the compost bin. Peas and asparagus go reasonably well together (as long as the former don’t take charge), but god forbid mint or lemon “to lift it up”, as advised by some. If one’s asparagus need lifting up, then one has sourced them poorly. I was once served asparagus salad consisting of soya curds drizzled with sunflower oil and chopped dill. The waiter swore that it is real asparagus. It was in rural Kazakhstan, mind.
I wonder if we are at cross purposes. It depends, obviously, how your asparagus is harvested. I always” trim mine by bending the spear. It will break naturally and it’s the broken off bits I’m talking about. I would not consider these edible by themselves, but they have enough flavour to end up in my recipe with a delicate but rather delicious soup made of stuff which in the old days I would have discarded.
To get restaurant quality soup one would follow your ideas, but using the stem apart from the tips. I only ever eat asparagus when the British stuff is in season, and it’s quite expensive, hence my wanting to make use of all of it.
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Regards,
Tom