Lesson 7 - Soups

I was really excited about this class.  I loooove soup!  And we were making some good ones: cream of cauliflower, farmer's style vegetable soup and french onion.  We also made a beef consommé.

There are two types of soups: bound soups and clear soups.  Clear soups are transparent soups such as consommé.  Bound soups are opaque soups that are thickened with starch, fish, meat or vegetables.

The cauliflower soups was made with leeks, butter, flour, chicken stock (or water can be used), cauliflower, egg yolk, heavy cream and salt & pepper.  The soup is put through a food mill and then a blender, but there should be some pieces of cauliflower floating in the soup, so you need to cook some of those separately a l'anglaise (in a large amount of salted water).  This is my cauliflower soup:

The cauliflower soup is REALLY good, but very rich.  The Farmer's style vegetable soup, however, is light and great.  I have made it for my sons because they like it so much.  They eat a little bit of the soup as the vegetable portion of their dinner.  

Farmer's style vegetable soup is made with leeks, celery, green beans, carrots, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, peas, bacon, vegetable stock, salt & pepper.  The soup is topped with large croutons (slices of baguette covered with shredded gruyere cheese and toasted).  This is my favorite soup!  It is not pureed, so is very simple to make.

End result:

I was really looking forward to the french onion soup.  But I was really disappointed with it because it turned out really sweet and peppery.  Apparently, that is how it is supposed to taste.  :(

French onion soup is made with lots of onions (duh), butter, garlic, flour, sherry, chicken or beef stock (or marmite, a beef stock made with blackened onions), salt & pepper.  It is also topped with the gruyere and gruyere covered croutons.  After the soup is cooked, it is covered with the croutons and the cheese and baked in the oven.  The result is beautiful:

If only it tasted better!!!

We also made a beef consommé, which is just a rich, clarified, translucent soup that is amber in color.  I have no pictures...  I do remember that we had to use 10 or so paper towels to absorb the grease from the top while we were cooking it.  Yuck!

Chef Bruno demoed Aspic, which is basically broth jello with a design in it.  I don't think that flavor would have made it if sold in stores next to the strawberry and orange jello.  It was pretty though:

That was all for soups - next lesson: Fish!