Silky Cauliflower Soup

 *Post by Angela.

Today I'm still recovering from being sick, so my stomach is a little unsure of itself.  For dinner, I really just wanted soup, and a light soup at that.  And nothing that would take forever to make.  Dave Lieberman had the perfect cure for me, a recipe that fit the bill, cost almost nothing to make, and also satisfied my recent cauliflower obsession. 

List of ingredients for the soup:

• 1 head cauliflower
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 quart low-sodium chicken broth (mock-chicken broth or vegetable broth for a vegetarian soup)
• 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

 First, I removed the leaves and core from the head of cauliflower and gave it a rough chop.  I also chopped up the onion and minced the garlic.

I heated the oil over medium heat, threw in the garlic and onion, and sauteed for about 5 minutes.  Normally, I like to cook onions and garlic until they are very soft and a little browned, but in order to maintain the color of the soup (and because the mixture is later pureed), I cooked them a little less this time.  

Next, I added the cauliflower and stock, brought it to a boil, reduced the heat to low, covered the pot and let the mixture simmer for 15 minutes.

Once the cauliflower was tender, I removed the pot from the heat and pureed it until smooth using my immersion blender (if you don't have an immersion blender, you can blend the soup in batches in a regular blender, just be careful!).  I then folded in the Parmesan cheese, and seasoned with plenty of freshly ground pepper.

As the soup was cooking, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and grated about a cup of Romano cheese (the original uses Parmesan, but I used all of my Parmesan up in the soup itself).  I then spread the cheese on a foil-covered baking sheet, cooked it about 10 minutes, then removed the sheet and let the cheese cool for about 5 minutes.  The cheese was supposed to peel away from the foil in perfect sheets of crisps; unfortunately, it stuck and I was forced to scrape the cheese off the foil and crumble it on top of my soup.  It still tasted really good.

The soup was just what I was looking for, creamy (without any cream!) yet light, filling yet healthy.  And it took less than 40 minutes to prepare.  While I would probably serve this alongside some sort of meat entree if I was 100% better, tonight, with just a couple of slices of crusty French bread, it was the perfect dinner for my poor recovering self...

Comments

[Evan Halperin]

nice, now I have something tasty that I can do with boring cauliflower.

[Angela]

Cauliflower is my new thing right now (I suppose you could say it's like my new Brussels sprouts, but more versatile) - I also like roasting it with a little bit of salt and garlic powder.