I love adore soup! All soup.
Well…maybe not all soup.
I was once on a school district committee where one of the elementary school reps reported on her school’s “soup day.” Seems they had an activity where each student was asked to bring a can of Campbell’s soup. Any flavor. Then, all the cans were mixed together in a giant pot and all the kids enjoyed a bowl of soup for lunch. Yikes!
I dunno. Seems to me that random marriage of flavors has the potential to go ever-so-wrong if enough kids brought Cream of Shrimp, Beef Burrito and Green Pea soups.
Let’s get back to today’s soup recipe and the wonders of making homemade soup. What I find so special about making soup is the alchemy of the whole thing. You put basic vegetables and other ingredients together, give it a whirl in the blender (or not), and sometimes…sometimes… magic happens. There you are with an exquisite soup for your table.
So it was with this asparagus soup. Definite magic.
This isn’t just a cream of asparagus soup, by the way–as exquisite as a good cream of asparagus soup can be. This delicately-flavored soup gathers some interesting ingredients in the soup pot with the asparagus– fresh fennel and white rice (as a thickener). As an extra bonus, at the end you get to add a generous tot of pernod to the soup.
Pernod, if you are not familiar with it, is a French anise-flavored liqueur, the successor to absinthe when absinthe was temporarily outlawed as a purported hallucinogenic. Pernod reminds me a bit of Greek ouzo.
You won’t get any hallucinations with any of these liqueurs, but you will get a heck of a headache if you drink too much. Did that once in Athens. Only once.
Here’s the recipe:
Save RecipeIngredients
- 2 1/2 T. olive oil
- 2 1/2 T. unsalted butter
- 2 heads of fennel cut into 3/4 inch dice (tops and cores removed)
- 3 C. leeks (carefully washed) (use only the white and light green parts of the leeks
- 2 1/2 C. chopped yellow onions (2 medium onions)
- 1 pound medium-thick asparagus
- 1/2 C. long-grain white rice
- 8 C. vegetable stock
- 3 large sprigs fresh thyme (tied into a bundle with kitchen string)
- Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper
- 1/2 C. julienned fresh basil (save a bit for the garnish but use the bulk of the basil in the soup)
- 2 T. Pernod liqueur
- 1/2 C. half-and-half
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese (for serving)
- Cayenne pepper or paprika (for garnish)
- Asparagus tips (for garnish)
Instructions
- Melt butter with olive oil in a large soup pot. Add fennel, leeks and onion to the butter/olive oil mixture. Prepare asparagus by breaking off the tough bottoms and then chopping the usable asparagus into 1/2-inch pieces. Add asparagus to the soup pot. Sauté the vegetables for 20 minutes until they are tender. Stir the vegetables occasionally.
- Add white rice to the cooked vegetables along with vegetable stock, thyme bundle, 2 T. salt and 1 t. pepper. Bring the soup mixture to a boil and then lower heat and simmer the soup for 30 minutes. This mixture will be done when the rice is very tender. Take the soup off the heat, remove and discard the thyme bundle,and stir in basil and Pernod.
- Meanwhile, boil a small amount of water in a separate pan and cook asparagus tips for about 2 minutes or until they are just tender. You will use the tips as garnish for your finished soup. When the asparagus tips are done, remove them from the hot water, drain them and transfer them to a bowl of ice water. Set aside until you are ready to serve the soup.
- Puree the soup mixture in a blender. Add the half-and-half and adjust seasonings.
- Ladle the hot soup into individual bowls. Sprinkle with a generous pinch of parmesan and garnish with julienned basil, an asparagus tip and a small pinch of either paprika or cayenne pepper. I also garnished the soup with a small whole basil leaf.
This recipe is an adaptation of one from Ina Garten’s Cooking for Jeffrey. You can buy the book on Amazon if you like. Here is the Amazon link: Amazon Books .
