Tangled Branches: Satiated
riveting tales of how we sustain ourselves
Monday, April 07, 2008
Green Garlic Soup v1.0
I still remember the first time I ate green garlic. The spouse and I stopped for lunch at the (lower priced, no reservations) café at Chez Panisse. This was at least 15 years ago, probably more. I don't remember what else I ate there, but we still talk about the green garlic soup. It was such a revelation. I remember it as being a pale green potato soup and one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.
I think that version must have been made something like this, but yesterday I concocted my own version, and it went something like this:
Chop one half a medium size yellow onion. Cook it slowly in 1 tbsp. butter until soft. Add 2 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut in 1-inch cubes and 3 stalks green garlic, thinly sliced crosswise. Stir this around for a minute or two and add 1 pint chicken broth (store-bought in this case) and 1 pint milk. Season with black pepper, but hold off on the salt for now (store-bought broth is usually so salty).
When the potatoes are very well cooked, mash them with a fork (or potato masher), and then puree part of the soup in small batches. This leaves you with a silky textured base, but not totally smooth. Taste first, then add salt if needed. I added a small amount of half & half just before serving, but it really wasn't necessary.
Now, this amount of garlic wasn't enough to really tint the soup green, and while the garlic flavor was there, it wasn't dominant. Perfectly acceptable for a business lunch or any other social occasion. We liked it a lot, but I plan to do it again with more garlic. And next time, I'm going to save some of the green leaves to chop as a garnish.
Alice Waters' latest cookbook (the only one of her books I own), The Art of Simple Food, has a green garlic soup recipe that's thickened with semolina instead of potato. We're very fond of potatoes, so I probably won't try that one until I've exhausted all the green garlic/potato possibilities.
Labels: green garlic, potatoes, soup
posted by Entangled at 6:05 PM
2 Comments:
I don't know why I never visited your food blog before... but I'm going to come back. And I definitely want to try this soup! For those of us who want to try it and don't give much of a damn about "polite company" when compared to "delicious garlicness," do you recommend we try to double the green garlic you used on this first go round... or maybe not quite that much?
Kim: I think I have maybe 2 readers here now - you and Kate - but I haven't posted very much here either. I'd like to do more as we start to get more vegetables and herbs from the garden.
I think you could use as much green garlic as you want here. The 3 stalks I used here were fairly small - about the size of green onions. The next time I make it, the garlic will have grown so 3 stalks will be a lot more than the first time. I might throw in a few chopped spinach leaves next time too - I really wanted the color to be more green.
I tend to tone down the garlic lately, not because I want to, but because my husband has so many business meetings these days. We eat a lot more garlic on Friday nights than any other time.
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