Simple Cauliflower Soup
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Making soup doesn't have to be difficult, and if you are working with fresh, high quality vegetables, you don't even have to add stock. This cauliflower soup couldn't be easier; just blanch cauliflower florets for a few minutes, purée them with some of the blanching liquid, salt, and butter, and serve with olive oil and chopped chives. The idea for this soup comes from my pal Garrett who was raving to me recently about a cauliflower soup he had at a local Sac bakery. Sam of Becks & Posh made a similar soup a while back. Of course when you are working with so few ingredients, you have to make sure that each ingredient is as good as it can be. There's no place to hide if something is off. What I love about this soup is that the cauliflower really shines through, and it's also pretty light, so it works well as a starter for other courses.
Simple Cauliflower Soup
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To take this soup from simple to sublime, add a dash or two of truffle salt or truffle oil to the soup when serving.
Ingredients
- Florets from one head of cauliflower (tough core of cauliflower discarded)
- 1 quart of water
- Salt
- Unsalted butter
- Chives
- Olive oil
Method
1 Bring 1 quart of water to a rolling boil in a medium-sized pot. Add 2 teaspoons of salt to the water (if using salted butter in this recipe, use only 1 teaspoon of butter). Add the cauliflower florets, and cook until cooked through, about 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove florets to a bowl. Reserve cooking water.
2 Working in batches, fill a blender half-way with cooked cauliflower, add enough cooking water to the blender bowl so that it comes up a quarter of the way. Purée until smooth. You want the consistency to be that of soup, so if you need to add more water, do so. For each blender batch, add salt and butter to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and about a tablespoon or more of butter for each blender batch). Since you are using only lightly salted cooking water for a base, not stock, you will need to salt this more than you would otherwise.
3 Serve immediately into bowls. Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with chopped chives.
Serves 4.
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I wonder, what this would taste like blanched in some vegetable stock. That way the flavour will be boosted slightly.