Curried Cauliflower Soup with Red Pepper Purée and Honey Pear Cheesecake
The phone rang at 8 this morning. I had been up for awhile, and was helping W make oatmeal. (To sum: no no no I can do it myself I CAN DO IT MYSELF! Insert dramatic throwing of self on the floor when I absentmindedly added the raisins. WHAT WAS I THINKING? It’s a good thing there was still flax seed that needed to be added is all I can say.)
Want to know who it was? It was Michael Smith. I can’t really tell you this story without name dropping, so there you go. It was Michael, losing his mind a little bit upon discovering his identity had been stolen on Twitter. Turns out some guy (or girl, as the case may be) has been posing as Michael, twittering about his family and even offering up the chance to meet him and come on set, since May. It only became obvious when the fake began bashing the Montréal food scene last night – so not cool – and so not Michael.
(To clarify: it’s not like I’m Michael’s wingman, the problem solver he calls when he needs things fixed. It’s just that I twittered him -aka the impostor- last night and he -the impostor- answered, and so I came up on the radar. Also, he doesn’t call every morning so that we can coordinate our outfits or to see what I’m having for breakfast.)
So it was damage control in PEI today, and I myself peppered my followers with alerts to Unfollow! RT! Fake! The good news is the real, actual Michael has been thrust into twitterland by all of this, and you can now follow him at @chefMICHAELsmth. (Yes, that’s him. NOT the other one.)
So Michael has been on my mind today. He really is a fantastic guy, just as he is on TV (not everyone is exactly like their on-air persona, I’m sad to say). I get to see him a few times a year, usually, and every November when we get together at the Jasper Park Lodge to eat and drink for a week. (You should come!) So I was perusing his website, looking for info on his (beautiful!) new book but distracted by recipes, and stumbled upon one for cauliflower soup.
Which made me pause only because I have a pot of cauliflower soup in my fridge, destined for dinner tonight. I made it yesterday to bring to my parents’ house, where my aunt and uncle are staying and where we all converged for dinner. It was good, but plain, like vichyssoise – I planned to stir some Boursin cheese into it, but then had none. Instead we crumbled blue cheese into the bottoms of the bowls before ladling the hot soup over.
I was wondering if it might benefit from some curry paste to liven it up tonight when I came upon Michael’s, which is curried, and made with orange juice. Mine was made with apples. I hastily threw the cauliflower directly into the pot; he roasted it first. (The only problem with this scenario: I’d eat so much of it straight from the pan that there wouldn’t be enough left for the soup.) So tonight, when I reheated the soup I stirred in a small glob of curry paste, and I simmered a withering red pepper with a splash of V-8 and took his advice to puree it (a hand-held blender worked fine – it was chunky, but delicious) and spoon it overtop. It was sweet and made a nice foil against the spicier soup. Halfway through my bowl I went back to the stove and dumped the rest of it overtop and swirled it in, the way I used to swirl chocolate sauce into ice cream.
Curried Cauliflower Soup with Apples & Red Pepper Purée
I should really have called this Cauliflower Soup Three Ways – you could do it without the curry and swirl in some Boursin cheese, or with crumbled blue, or leave the curry and add the red pepper purée, or come up with your own version. It’s just soup.
olive or canola oil, for cooking
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 tsp. – 1 Tbsp. curry paste (optional)
1 large cauliflower, roughly chopped or separated into florets
1 apple, peeled and chopped (or try a pear)
1 L chicken or vegetable stock (or half stock, half orange juice)
1/4-1/2 cup half & half
salt & pepperRed Pepper Puree (optional):
1-2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup tomato juice or V-8Heat a drizzle of oil in a largish pot and sauté the onion until soft; add the garlic and curry paste and cook for another minute or two. Add the cauliflower, apple and chicken stock, plus a little water if it needs it to barely cover the cauliflower, and bring to a simmer.
Reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the cauliflower is very tender. Remove from heat and purée with a hand-held immersion blender, right in the pot (or do it in batches in the blender); add the cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.
And after, rifling through the fridge I found a forgotten slice of cheesecake – one Cheryl gave me from her BT appearance yesterday morning. It’s from a Honey Pear Cheesecake – made with puréed and chopped pears – and it’s wonderful. She has the recipe posted on her blog, so you’ll have to go get it. It would make a great Thanksgiving dessert I think, made with a gingersnap crust. (See Cheryl, I plated it? And garnished it with a flourish of honey, just like you said? Sorry I didn’t have the gumption to slice a pear fan – I just wanted to eat.)
And by the way, I apologize for the encroaching left sidebar – I had to widen it just for a week, as tomorrow we launch an online charity event sponsored by Quaker that runs until October 8th. And, well, you’ll just have to check in and see tomorrow!
One Year Ago: Chicken Fajitas
September 24 2009 | freezable and soup | 15 Comments »
