September 18, 2021

YELLOW SOUP, with a vibe of cauliflower cheese (soup maker recipe)


We are now in our last few days of our three month stay in France.

We have had a wonderful time.  It's been hard work getting the house and garden back in order after such a long time away - ten months.  The weather has also been very mixed, in fact rather more English than French at times, cool and showery.  


A mists and mellow fruitfulness kind of morning on the day of my birthday party.
You can read about it here.

However, come September we had a return to warmer weather and the month turned into the very reason why it is my favourite time to be in France in the whole year.  Warm days, misty mornings and cool nights, just perfect.


As always, eating out was often unplanned.  That last minute invitation to lunch with friends or the temptation of the menu du jour on a shopping trip.  The result of which is a fridge full of uneaten food and need to be inventive when using it up instead of throwing it away.  

Enter stage left the £4 cauliflower*.  I kid you not!  Fruit and veg seem to be so much more expensive in France than in the UK now and sometimes I balk at the prices but when you're sick of carrots, who can resist a big, fresh cauli?  Hence it would have been criminal to throw any of it away and with half of it looking slightly less fresh in the fridge - time to bring out the soup maker!


I have got into the habit of writing down the ingredients I used each time I make soup so that I can make it exactly the same again if it turns out really well.  Which this one did - and it was bright yellow!


The Emmental cheese was ready grated and from one of those ubiquitous and much maligned bags found in every French supermarket.  We love it and like horses for courses it's perfect for certain things, one of them being this soup.  I stirred it in at the end of cooking and as it didn't melt completely there were flecks of the cheese in the soup - an added bonus, IMHO.

* By the way, one week later we bought another cauliflower of a similar size from the same supermarket for 1.89€ !!  (About £1.60, much more sensible!)

Ingredients

half a cauliflower
2 - 3 medium carrots
1 onion
1 large potato
1 vegetable stock pot
1 tblsp olive oil flavoured with rosemary
1 splash of Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste
2 heaped tablespoons grated Emmental cheese

Method

Prepare all the veg by washing / cleaning, peeling as appropriate and cutting into chunks.  Prepare enough to fill the machine to the lower line.

Add water to the upper line, then the oil and seasoning and cook on smooth.

Stir in the cheese as soon as the soup is cooked.

Makes four generous portions.

10 comments:

  1. Can you not stretch your return until after the 9th Oct? Save you test costs...

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    1. Sadly not, that would be way beyond our Schengen allowance of 90 days and we don't know what the consequences of flouting the rules and getting caught are. Not that we would want to anyway but just for the cost of two tests it's not worth the risk.

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    2. Heck yes just looked it up. The fine and ban would total far more than two tests. Safe Travels.

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    3. I meant to add that the French tests that will no longer be required are only 25€ each, about £20. The more expensive day two tests will still be required. We have got ours for £48 each but they can cost much more than that. (Or much less if you live near enough to a drive through test centre.)
      Personally I would have thought it made more sense to have the pre travel tests in France still in place, so that people can only board their plane, ferry or train if they are vaccinated and have a negative test. In other words nobody entering the country could have the virus and the risk of spreading it. The govt has chosen to do it the other way around, allowing potentially infected people back into the country then testing them after two days when they might have passed it on to lots of other people.
      Still, it keeps the UK testing people in business..........

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  2. I love the sunshine yellow - but misread your hand written recipe. 23 carrots 🥕seemed a little excessive.☺️ Safe journeys home! ❤️

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    1. I looked at my note myself and thought "23 carrots - never" !! Scribbling in a hurry is never good!

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  3. I read a dash between 2-3 carrots. I'll try out your recipe which sounds delicious.
    Safe travels back x

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    1. To think that I almost hesitated for half a minute before buying this soup maker to keep in France!!

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  4. That's a truly yellow soup and I love a colourful soup. It reminded me of the bright yellow pepper soups that became briefly trendy back in the eighties but I suspect that yours has much more flavour than most of those. Having tried to grow decent caulis myself, I'm amazed that they can be sold as cheaply as they are sometimes in this country. Although that could be the result of my shoddy veg growing skills.

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    1. I suspect that the cheap veg we have been used to in the UK could become a thing of the past before too long and I am not looking forward to the empty supermarket shelves I have been hearing about. Food seems expensive sometimes in France but at least there is plenty of it to choose from.
      In our brief experiment in growing veg we never tried cauliflower. The veg patch wasn't big enough in the UK and was put to better use growing broad beans.

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