CSA cooking: Celery Soup

basket inventory: 2 kinds of lettuce, large bunch of chard, arugula, dill, rosemary, sprouts, tangerines, Valencia oranges, celery, limes, kumquats, mandarins, radishes, strawberries, avocados, Meyer lemons

I recently had the most amazing soup while teaching a preserving class at Joanne's house a few days ago. She graciously made me this AMAZING celery soup that had a number of servings of. What i love about the way Joanne made this soup is that she omitted cream and potatoes, 2 items that can mask the flavor of of home-grown celery. Fresh celery has an incredible clean-earthy flavor that is so fitting to the cold, rainy weather we have been having and this soup captures it perfectly. I also used the celery from our little garden for this recipe-our first harvest! i changed only a few items from the original recipe.

CELERY SOUP:

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 6 c chopped celery
• 2 onions chopped
• 1 large potato (optional)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 21/2 c water or veggie broth
• s&p, cayenne (i added curry)
• Toasted baguette AND/OR
• Handful of parm (to make toasted pieces)

chop celery (i added leaves), onions and garlic and saute with oil in a stick pot to sweat for at least 10 min or until soft. add spices/season, saute for 5 min. add stock and heat.
puree (careful with hot liquids!!) until smooth. put through a food mill if needed (or if you have one, or a sieve).


put back into pot and heat. season and taste to liking...you can add cream if you want (or soy) but you really dont need it if you put the work into puree.
toast bread or handfuls of parm-cheese and add to soup or have alone-it is that good!