Friday, May 24, 2013

FFwD - Asparagus Soup



... asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world.
Marcel Proust

It has been an asparagus-tinged week for me - first asparagus in the Savoury Brioche Pockets, then Rigatoni with Peas, Asparagus and Ricotta, and now, Asparagus Soup for French Fridays with Dorie.  Phew!  Luckily I like asparagus. 

I found the steps involved in making this soup a little fiddly - peel the stalks; place the trimmings in cheesecloth and boil with the asparagus etc etc.  The recipe calls for 2 1/2 pounds of asparagus, so peeling all of those spears would have sent me potty.  However, due to the price of asparagus here (end of season) and the fact that I didn't want six serves of soup, I only had to peel six spears, and bulked up the asparagus content with some leftover tinned asparagus that I had in the fridge.   

As expected, this soup tasted predominantly of - well, asparagus.  There's a hint - if you aren't a fan of asparagus, don't make this soup.  It was OK, but didn't light any fires for me.

To see what the other Doristas thought of this soup, visit the LYL section of the website.

Vale Hazel Hawke, who passed away yesterday aged 84.  Hazel was the wife of one of our prime ministers, Bob Hawke.  She reminds me of being a child in upper primary school, when Bob was elected PM, as one of our teachers told the class that if you didn't know the answer in the social studies test, write "Bob Hawke".   I think our teacher was encouraging people to "have a crack" (to use a great Australian colloquialism) rather than to leave the answer blank; however, some students took him literally and wrote "Bob Hawke" as the answer to questions they didn't know, much to the amusement of our class.  Good times!

15 comments:

Cher Rockwell said...

I kind of skipped the fiddly parts... Yes - you definitely needed to like asparagus on this one.

Your Bob Hawke story kind of sounds like us entering everything with "George Washington" :-)

ayu | the spicy lemongrass said...

Is there such a thing as an asparagus overdose? ;) This soup was just okay for me too. Nothing special. Although my baby seemed to love it. I don't think I'll be making it again though. Bon weekend!

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

It definitely sounds like you'd need to be an asparagus lover for this-which I am :D

Mardi Michels said...

I didn't do the fiddly parts either ;)
Have a great weekend!

Anonymous said...

did u use the green ones for the soup???

yummychunklet said...

Fantastic Proust quotation!

Teresa said...

I love your choice of quotation and your soup looks delicious. I bet you're wanting to move on to other vegetables now, though.

Andrea_TheKitchenLioness said...

I love your very pretty soup dish - what a nice way to serve your green asparagus soup. We adore anything asparagus so we enjoyed this soup, you are quite right, it is a soup meant for the "asparagus lover".
Have a nice weekend!

Choc Chip Uru @ Go Bake Yourself said...

I am not big on asparagus but I could eat for this :D

Cheers
Choc Chip Uru

Cakelaw said...

Yes, I did

Nana said...

It certainly looks delicious. You had a busy week with asparagus but it all turned out well. Everything looks
great.

Betsy said...

A little fiddly? I'd say a lot fiddly. I skipped those parts too. I liked the soup, but the other dishes you made sound even more interesting. I've seen the savory brioche pockets on a few other blogs, and want to try to make that one (I dropped out of TWD months ago). Kudos to you to make so many asparagus recipes when it's not in season where you are. You are a good sport.

Johanna GGG said...

I love asparagus but I prefer it lightly cooked rather than in soup

And nice tribute to hazel hawke - sad to hear of her passing and amusing to hear your teacher's ideas on test

Liz That Skinny Chick Can Bake said...

I had the same review...it was fine, but nothing spectacular. I made a half batch, but a quarter would have been perfect :)

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean about this soup, lucky for us we all like asparagus so this soup was well received!