Broccoli Soup

Faith enjoying her favorite soup in a pink tutu

So, Glenn and Reid are busy at the Quincy market, so naturally, now that it is broccoli season, Faith is requesting her favorite – broccoli soup. Conveniently, the truck had just driven by, loaded with bins of the most gorgeous broccoli, so it was a perfect night for her soup. In 35 minutes I had her soup made and in front of her along with a fab slice of ciabatta from Rose 32 Bread (dropped off this am by Cindy when picking up tomatoes and peaches).

 

I have streamlined the Gourmet recipe I started with 20 years ago and tonight’s ended up being vegetarian.

  

 

 

• 2 heads broccoli (probably about 2 lbs)
• about 6 cups of water
• 3 Tb butter
• 3-4 Tb flour
• s&p
• 3/4 cup light cream

Cut up broccoli by removing tops from stems and quartering stems long ways – you want it to cook evenly. Put in large stock pot with water and salt (start with a generous tsp) and simmer until very tender (15-20 minutes). Remove from heat and puree broccoli with cooking liquid. I use my immersion blender (before I had that I used my Grandmother’s Foley Food Mill, and later pureed just the broccoli in the Cuisinart stirring in the water later). There are many ways to skin this cat, but tonight I poured the puree off into another vessel so I could continue using the same pot. Melt butter in pot, add flour and make roux, slowly adding broccoli puree in until all incorporated, heated through, and thickened. Then add your cream until desired creaminess is achieved. Milk or Rice milk works too, but we are overrun with cream this week from our milk deliveries, so use what you’ve got.

Normally I would have added a few rounded spoonfuls of chicken bouillon/base to the cooking water, but I was out, and can you believe I ran out of regular salt too? So, not wanting to use a coarse salt or sea salt, I adjusted the seasoning with the seasoned salt sitting on the counter – a perfect solution!