Fresh Cream of Asparagus Soup

I saw some lovely pencil thin asparagus on sale yesterday at the grocery and started to get the urge to make an asparagus soup ... so I bought 2 bunches, each about a pound in weight. When I got home I started to scan for a likely recipe online but decided I had made enough soup by now to wing it, sans recipe .. so I did ... and it was GREAT!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup Butter

1 large Onion (I like to use a sweet onion like vidalia or walla walla but any jumbo onion will do)

1 lg stalk, Celery

4 cloves, Garlic ( I used roasted garlic cloves but that's optional you can use minced or puree or whatever)

3 cups Chicken Broth (I used home made broth but a Liter carton of good no salt broth will work just as well)

2 lb Asparagus, cleaned with bottom woody part snapped off and chopped into 1-2" lengths (2 bunches)

1 medium Potato ( I used a small Russet about 230g) peeled and diced

1/4 cup flour, all purpose

1 cup half and half cream ( 10%MF)

1 cup milk

1/8 tsp pepper (I used ground white pepper)

1 pinch Cayenne Pepper or to taste

3 tsp Chicken Bouillon - I used Better than Bouillon Chicken flavoured paste made with real chicken

Directions

I used 2 bundles of asparagus for this, each bundle was about 1 lb BEFORE breaking off woody stems ... final weight of asparagus after snapping, was about 1 lb 4 oz ... no need to obsess, just use 2 bundles and snap off woody stem ends then cut into roughly 1-2" pieces

Boil asparagus and one diced potato in 3 cups chicken stock (one 1L mason jar of my homemade chicken stock in my case but a litre/quart carton of any good chicken stock will do) for 15 minutes or until very tender. Set aside for later.

In separate large stockpot sautee rough chopped onion and celery in butter until beginning to caramelize. Add roasted garlic cloves and flour and cook for a minute or two to take the raw edge off the flour.

Pour in reserved vegetables WITH broth, add cream and milk and using an immersion blender puree until smooth and creamy.

Season with spices and "Better Than (chicken) Bouillon" (to taste) and blend again to mix. Since the bouillon is pretty salty already I found I did not need to add any salt to this. My homemade chicken stock is also salt free so if you substitute other ingredients keep that in mind and taste frequently to make sure you don't over salt this.

Can add a little grated Parmesan and or croutons at the end but I tried this without it first and it was so good already I didn't bother. You could also reserve a few cooked tips of asparagus before pureeing and garnish with them if you like but again I didn't bother.

I had another bowl of this today and once again I am amazed at how much I actually like this soup. While I like asparagus it isn't one of my top go to vegetables generally but this soup is fantastic ... the asparagus flavour comes through really well but is not overpowering. This recipe made exactly 8 cups if finished soup with a final total weight of 2000g so a good 8 one cup servings. Each cup of soup came in at 182 calories and had 2.5g fiber. It is also low in sodium with only 415g. If you want to see the full nutritional breakdown you can view it at :

http://www.livestrong.com/recipes/mysticls-cream-asparagus-soup/

IA