Covid-19 Lockdown Cooking: Asparagus Soup Redux

Though being able to cook with what you have on hand is a valuable skill in general, as France enters its seventeenth day of Covid-19 lockdown it's even more so because for everybody's welfare you shop for groceries as infrequently as possible. To make do, you cook either without certain items or you substitute with what you do have or you create a whole new dish with what's available chez vous. Creativity, simplicity, and a bit of chutzpa all go a long way. Our asparagus patch have been giving us spears since mid-February.  A large, delectable batch for asparagus soup—deviating from my regular recipe as there wasn't any green onions or cream on hand so several fat garlic cloves and a sizable quantity of very ripe bleu d'Auvergne way too lusty to eat on its own (added in chunks to pureed soup and stirred until completely melted. Wow!) instead were substituted—already has been made and frozen, lying in wait to warm up our bellies during next autumn and winter.

This present batch was made with cream but still no green onions, so lots of garlic instead, and each serving got topped with thin slivers of Coulommiers in lieu of a light sprinkling of crumbled blue cheese. Because the garlic when gently sauteed in butter until soft adds such lushness to the already lush, freshly picked spears, I am thinking that even when food shopping is no longer limited, garlic is much better than green onions! In addition, to satisfy my desire for a thicker, more substantial and nourishing soup with even more asparagus flavour, I doubled the amount of spears. It turned out grand!

One solitary spear makes not a soup.

But a bunch of higgledy piggledy spears do!

Ingredients
makes 4 ample servings

• Asparagus, green, 1 kg/2.2 lbs
• Butter, sweet, 50g/2 T
• Garlic, cloves, large, 3-4
• Flour, white, 1 T
• Cream, 2 T
• Coulommiers or Brie, thin slivers for garnishing
• Stock made from woody asparagus trimmings, 1 litre/34 fluid oz (see below for instructions)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Peel and mince garlic. Rinse the spears. Snap off the woody ends and chop them coarsely. Reserve. Cut the remaining tender stalks including their tips into chunks. Put the woody ends/trimmings along with 1 litre/34 fluid oz of water in a pot. Cover, bring to boil, and simmer for twenty minutes. Strain and reserve. Discard the ends/trimmings. Melt the butter and saute the minced garlic over medium low heat for a minute or two until translucent and fragrant, but not browned. Stir in the flour. Add slowly the stock while stirring. Toss in the chunked, tender stalks, including tips, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for around eight minutes or until tender. Puree with a stick mixer or blender. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Add cream, reheat if necessary, and garnish with slices of Coulommiers or Brie.

À la prochaine!