Asparagus Soup

One of my favourite things to do is go the market and look for inspiration for something delicious. Spring is a great time to do this as there is something new almost every week and what caught my attention this time was asparagus. I love the taste of asparagus and it matches well with a few other flavours I really enjoy, like bacon and garlic.

I'm also a big fan of soup and with an almost infinite number of possible combinations, it is one of the cooking methods I use most.

This asparagus soup is really one of the simplest dishes to make and explodes with intense, fresh flavour.

I began by setting a pot of salted water to boil, then cleaning the asparagus and cutting of the bottom 4 or 5 centimeters of each stalk. You can tell where to cut by picking up one stalk and holding the middle with one hand and bending the base with a thumb and forefinger until it snaps. Use this level as a guide for cutting the rest of the bunch. The part that snaps off is usually discarded, but if you're making a soup or stock, keep these to add flavour.

Next I sauteed the asparagus offcuts with some onion, garlic and a couple of bay leaves in a little butter to start the stock base.

To finish the stock I put this into a small pot with some vegetable stock and brought it to a simmer.

Once the salted water in the other pot had come to a boil, I dropped in the asparagus to cook.

Once it was tender, but still had a little bite to it, I picked out the asparagus and put them into an ice bath to stop them cooking and to keep the bright colour. It's a good idea to keep the cooking water until the soup is finished just in case you didn't make enough stock to get the soup to the consistency you like. That water has been flavoured by the asparagus and is a much better option than using plain water.

To finish the soup, I simply took the asparagus out of the ice bath and placed them into a blender with a small amount of the strained asparagus stock and blended this until it was smooth before adding more stock to get it to the right thickness. This was also the perfect time to taste and season the soup. Once this was done, I returned the soup back to a clean pot to reheat before serving.

To garnish, I gently fried a few strips of Jamon Iberico (but you can use bacon or prosciutto too) and a few drops of a really bright, grassy olive oil. Another garnish to make it extra decadent would be finishing it off with a dollop of creme fraiche.

 A very easy, bright coloured soup with lots of fresh flavour and a smokey, salty hit from the Jamon Iberico. I'll definitely want to make this one again before spring is over.