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cauliflower and stilton soup recipe
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June 22, 2003
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Saturday, Rebecca and I had the pleasure of having lunch at Jeanty at Jack's, a great French Bistro in downtown San Francisco. One of the highlights of our visit was the Soupe du Jour, a Cauliflower and Bleu Cheese Soup. Bone-white, rich, and mild, it was an elegant, filling soup. Since cauliflower season is just coming on, I decided to take on the challenge of making such a soup the very next day. Here's the result of my first attempt.
Cauliflower and Stilton Soup
Ingredients
for the soup:
2 slices of thick cut bacon (or 3-4 thin) 5-6 cups cauliflower florets (1 to 1 1/2 large heads?) 1 large Yukon Gold potato, diced 1/4 cup flour 3 cloves of roasted garlic nutmeg cayenne pepper 6 oz stilton milk
for the dumplings:
3/4 cup breadcrumbs 3/4 cup panko 1 egg 1/2 tbsp butter, melted 1/2 to 3/4 cup cooked fish or shellfish meat, shredded
Directions
In a deep pan suitable for cooking soup, render the fat from the bacon slices. Remove the bacon from the pan, leaving the fat. Saute the diced potato and the cauliflower florets (as well as the garlic if you're using raw garlic) for five minutes, then add the flour and cook a bit longer. Add the stock, crumbled bacon pieces, 1 cup of milk, 1/4 tsp each of nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. Cook for twenty-five minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally to make sure that it's not burning on the bottom.
While the mixture is cooking, prepare the fish dumplings. Feel free to use almost any kind of fish or shellfish you have around -- salmon, scallops, crab, lobster, should all work fine. I had a single Steelhead Trout filet in the freezer, so that's what I chose, and it worked fine. Mix all of the listed ingredients together. Don't be afraid if there's some clumping due to the small quantity of wet ingredents. Add milk in 1/8 cup batches, stirring through, until the mixture coheres enough to form small balls. Roll into 1/2 inch balls.
Once the cauliflower mixture is finished cooking, blend in batches and put back into the original pan. Add milk to thin to desired consistency. (After blending, the mixture may be like a thick porridge. Add a little milk until it's more pudding-like, then add a bit more.) Add the fish dumplings, submerging them completely. Crumble the stilton and stir through. Cook on low heat for ten more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste and serve.
Thoughts
There are many differences between my soup and the Jeanty at Jack's version. Some were intentional. The dumplings, for instance, were my addition, inspired by some research I did into similar soups. Other differences were not by choice. The Jeanty soup is completely white. All of their ingredients are probably white or clear. This made for a very elegant soup, but one which was beyond my humble kitchen. They must have used a consomme or a white chicken stock, I imagine. (Actually, it could have been a clear vegetable stock, I suppose.) I had none of these things, so I used regular chicken stock, and the brand that I use is quite yellow. As a result, my soup was light tan in color, rather than white. Similarly, they probably used white pepper. I thought I had some, but I could not find it. (I need a better system for spice organization!) My soup, therefore, had little black specks sprinked throughout.
Both in taste and texture, too, I thought my soup was a bit heavier, perhaps betraying the bacon fat and potato, neither of which, I suspect, were present in the Jeanty version. I also think that my soup has more bleu cheese than theirs, and is spiced more heavily. But I am satisfied with my choices in all of these cases. Heavier though it is, I think my soup is fairly well balanced. And it is not overwhelmed by the Stilton or the spices. (In fact, we both thought that the Jeanty version could use a little more bleu cheese.)
Finally, the restaurant soup likely benefited from the inclusion of onions or shallots, both of which are verboten in my kitchen due to Rebecca's strong feelings about them. If you're following this recipe, feel free to add an onion -- chop it and saute it in the bacon fat before you add the other ingredients.
This is a good soup. It's cheap, hearty, and flavorful. Check it out.
June 22, 2003 in old_site, recipes, soups_stews | Permalink
