This would be a delightful soup to serve on New Year’s Eve.
It’s delicious.
It’s beautiful.
The Roquefort cheese and butter mixture stirred into the soup at the list minute adds a subtle and unexpected flavor that should wow your guests on that special night.
It would definitely be a conversation starter.
After all, who expects to find blue cheese in their soup, let alone a fine sheep milk blue from Southern France with, according to Smithsonian Magazine, a pedigree that dates back to at least 1411–the year when French King Charles VI of France officially gave the cheese the protection of the crown.
Here’s a bit of history. Charles VI was known as Charles The Beloved when he was young. He succeed to the throne at eleven. As he matured, however, things took a dark turn and “The Beloved” morphed into “The Mad” as Charles’ mental health deteriorated. At times, he thought he was made of glass and would shatter if jostled. At other times, he ran wildly up and down the halls of his palace, a development that caused his aides to seal the palace doors. In battle, he attacked his own men. It was a difficult time for France and its troubled king during a particularly fraught period in French history as France struggled with England.
We’re figuring that the recognition of Roquefort cheese as a French treasure was done on one of Charles’ good days.
I first learned this recipe at the La Bonne Cuisine Cooking School then located just off Main Street in Seal Beach, California. Margaret, the proprietor, was a talented recipe developer. I fell in love with the tiny cooking school and attended many classes there. We learned everything from classical French dishes to regional Mexican ones.
Sadly, La Bonne Cuisine Cooking School is long closed and to my knowledge no similar cooking school operates locally. Fortunately, I still have a big notebook of Margaret’s recipes. Here is the original recipe handout from the school with all the scribbles of an eager cooking student (me!). It looks like I took that class in the summer of 1979–23 years ago.
Wow! I HAVE been serving this soup for a long time.
Here is Veloute de Roquefort as I prepared it in my kitchen. This soup deserves the best Roquefort cheese you can find.
Veloute de Roquefort Soup
Ingredients
- For Soup
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 medium-sized onions (quartered)
- 2 T. butter
- 2 carrots
- 4-5 stalks celery
- 2 T. flour
- 6 C. vegetable stock
- 1 C. milk
- To Finish
- 1 C. Cream
- 2 oz. Roquefort Cheese
- 2 T. butter
- Chopped chives for garnish
Directions
- Step 1 Using your food processor, drop the garlic clove into the bowl with the processor running and process the garlic until it is chopped fine. Turn the machine off and add the quartered onions. Process until the onion is chopped fine. Remove the chopped vegetables to a small bowl and set aside.
- Step 2 Chop the celery until you have a fine dice. For uniformity, I found that this was best done by hand. Set aside.
- Step 3 Use the food processor to finely-chop the carrots and set aside.
- Step 4 Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the garlic and onions to the butter and saute until the mixture becomes fragrant. This will take a few minutes. Add the chopped carrots and celery to the mixture. Put parchment paper over the pot and top the parchment with the soup pot lid. Continue to cook, steaming the vegetables until they are tender. Remove the pot from the heat and add the flour. Stir. Return to heat, stir and then cook for another few minutes. Add the stock and milk to the pot and stir. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook for another 10 minutes.Your soup will thicken.When your soup is cooked, remove the pot from the heat.
- Step 5 Remove a couple of cups of the sauteed vegetable mixture from the pot and puree. Return the pureed vegetables to the soup. This will thicken your soup a bit more.
- Step 6 Add cream to your taste and stir the soup.
- Step 7 Mash the cheese and the butter together with a fork and then whisk the cheese/butter mixture into the soup. The Roquefort flavor in the soup is subtle. You can add more Roquefort to the soup to suit your taste. Serve topped with a sprinkling of chopped chives. This soup is also nice topped with a thin slice of toasted French bread.
