Can't Get Enough of Cream Soups...
20 January 2010
I am totally into cream soups at the moment. It is cold and wintery outside, and my stomach longs for something tasty, creamy, hot, but rather light. The key is to use lots of fresh vegetables and cook them in relatively little water. When you blend it, the soup will get really creamy all by itself, without any need to add lots of heavy cream to get the texture right. Not only will this make the soup lighter, but also more concentrated in taste…
Though they're handy to make those cream soups take a little time to cook – maybe some 30-45 minutes, depending on the vegetable - and when I come home from work rather late in the evening I don't necessarily want to wait for that long. So last week I tried out pre-cooking a pot of thick and tasty zucchini and lemon grass cream soup on Sunday, so I just needed to warm it up the following days. To vary, I added an egg to the soup on one evening (lovely combination, very recommendable!); another evening I felt like having something more solid to bite, so I cooked some soba noodles to dip into the soup; and on the third evening I used the rest of the soup as the basis for a quickly-made mushroom sauce.
Although I’d had it several days in a row, I was not at all fed up with the soup at the end of the week; in fact I was rather sad it was all gone. This is definitely a concept I will follow during the weeks to come to make it through the "soupy weather"… I already have plenty of combinations in mind: kohlrabi-carrot-ginger, broccoli-saffron,… More to come!
Zucchini & Lemon Grass Cream Soup
| serves 4 |
| 4 courgettes (zucchini) |
| 1/2 stick of lemon grass |
| 500-600ml concentrated vegetable soup stock out of organic stock cubes |
| 1 teaspoon of red Thai curry |
| garlic powder to taste |
| 1 tablespoon of crème fraîche |
| some olive oil |
| soy sauce to taste, if necessary |
| optional: 4 eggs |
Coursely slice the courgettes and salt very slightly. Once they have softened, sweat gently with a little bit of olive oil in a soup pot. Finely chop the lemon grass and add to the pot, along with a generous teaspoon of red Thai curry powder as well as some garlic powder, and stir.
Pour over the vegetable stock, cover with a lid and let simmer for about 30 minutes.
When the courgettes are boiled really soft, blend everything in a food processor. Pass back into the soup pot, bring to a light simmer again and season to taste with some more garlic powder and a dash of soy sauce, if you like. Finally stir in a tablespoon of crème fraîche to refine.
Optionally you can add an egg for each person to the soup: Open the eggs gently so the yolks don’t burst, and drop the inside into the simmering soup. Let simmer until the white solidifies but the yolks stay liquid. When serving, make sure one entire egg lands in each person’s bowl. Eat immediately before the yolks get solid!