Cream of asparagus soup (p.144)

So what to do with the rest of my chicken stock...(this is actually a question that I have quite a bit since I make chicken stock fairly often)...

Cream of asparagus soup (p.144)! And asparagus was even on sale, always a nice extra!

I used to absolutely hate asparagus. It was one of the few foods that I refused to eat (tuna, peppers, onions, asparagus, green olives) as a kid. On a whim a few years ago I tried them again--and they were extremely good. Apparently I was wrong! Actually, most of the items on that list are things that I like now--only two of them are still on my hated list :) Unfortunately for my mother, all five of those items are among her favorite foods, and since it was only the two of us, she didn't get to eat them very often!

TJOC has twelve cream soup recipes ranging from common (cream of mushroom) to odd (cream of watercress? Does watercress have much of a taste?) to bizarre (cream of chestnut?? Really?).

The recipe is easy enough--start with butter, celery, and onions, and add in a pound and a half of asparagus. I bought two pounds of asparagus, broke them off at the tough part, and considered it the correct amount.





A tiny bit of flour is then added in, and then in goes the stock:





Eventually the soup looks like this:




I know that looks a little burned but it didn't taste burned...I'm not sure exactly what happened there. I must say, I LOVE my immersion blender. This is the point where you would have to pour boiling hot soup out of a enormous metal pot, into a food processor or blender, while not scalding yourself. Using an immersion blender totally solves the problem while also not making any more dishes. Finally, the heavy cream was added and this is what you get:





Yum! It was incredibly tasty and really good. I'm looking forward to making the next cream soups! And it heated up extremely well--which makes it great for lunch.