Cauliflower cheese & gruyere soup - recipe anyone?

Mardrew

Hello

I was wondering if you wonderful people could help me out. I have just been out for tea and had a cauliflower cheese & gruyere soup as a starter and it was delicious. We have friends coming for dinner on Saturday and I thought it might be nice for me to try to make this myself. So, I was just wondering if anyone had made this soup before and could share a recipe with me.

Very many thanks

Mardrew (an inexperienced soup-maker!)

Pink.

Hi Mardrew,

It's not quite the same but I've made cauliflower cheese soup with cheddar before and it's delicious. I imagine you could just substitute the cheddar with gruyere.

Soften an onion and a small clove of garlic in some butter. Add chopped cauliflower, cover and cook gently for about 15 minutes. Add some black pepper, chicken stock (a stock cube made up in water will do but it will have a higher salt content than homemade stock) and cook for about 20 minutes. Add some cream and cheddar cheese to your taste and whizz with a hand blender.

Sorry I haven't added measurements as I tend to cook by eye but it's one of the easiest soups to make. If you would prefer a recipe with exact measurements you could adapt this recipe by Delia, by leaving out the roquefort and adding gruyere instead:

Cauliflower Soup with Roquefort

Pink

Mardrew

Pink-winged

Thanks ever so much for that. It sounds delicious.

Can I ask another daft question. I haven't got a hand blender but I did get a Magimix processor just before Christmas and am just starting to learn how to use it. Can I blend the soup in there and will it make it really smooth or will it be 'bitty'? (The soup I had tonight was smooth.)

Many thanks

Pink.

Hi Mardrew,

I have never used a magimix but if it's anything like my food processor it will be fine. Just make sure that the soup has cooled a little before adding it. I only use the hand blender because it's so much easier to clean afterwards.

By the way if you have any leftover, this soup freezes really well.

Pink

Mardrew

Next question - I've just started making this soup - I've used Delia's idea for making the stock i.e from the cauliflower stalks, and I'm now sweating out some onion, garlic and potato and then I'm going to add the stock and the cauliflower- I'm kinda looking at both recipes.

Should I whizz first and will it then be okay to add the cream ? I'm preparing this now but won't be serving it until tonight. (Delia uses creme fraiche but I was going to use single cream.) Am I right that I should leave putting the cheese in until I'm reheating it tonight?

Many thanks for any advice.

Mardrew

PS This seemed like a good idea on Thursday night but I'm wondering if I should have a back-up starter plan as I've never had any success with soup. It has always been too salty or lumpy.

Pink.

You can add the cream before or after whizzing, it won't make any difference. Likewise it won't make the slightest difference when you add the cheese as it will 'disolve' into the soup.

l'd be tempted to make it all now.....that way you can tweak the flavouring and get it just right so you aren't under any pressure when your guests have arrived and all you will have to do is warm it up. I'm probably stating the obvious here, but make sure to reheat it gently as, with the cheese and cream in it, it could burn or boil over easily if heated too quickly.

Mardrew wrote:

PS This seemed like a good idea on Thursday night but I'm wondering if I should have a back-up starter plan as I've never had any success with soup. It has always been too salty or lumpy

It is a good idea...soup is one of the best starters to make as it can all be done in advance. I hope you have a fantastic evening!

Pink

blue-kat

sometimes the results for blending soups in food processor are a bit variable, you can end up with a suspension - lots of finely chopped bits slopping around, rather than silky smooth combined fluid.

to get smoother soup in the m-mix, I sometimes strain the soup and add the solids first so they form a puree, then add the liquids to dilute the thick puree.

enjoy your new M-mix I got one Xmas before last and love it

Mardrew

Just to say a huge thank-you to Ping-winged for guiding me through this. The soup was a huge success. I have had a £20 Tesco giftcard in my purse for some time (from when Ts couldn't beat my car insurance quote) and finally used it yesterday to buy a Philips handblender. I was so impressed by it. I couldn't believe it when I first made and blended the soup. I kept saying, in a shocked voice, to the rest of the family "but it really looks and tastes like proper soup!" I think they were quite impressed with my efforts as well. I think we will be having a lot more soup from now on!

Just to let you know, as a pre-starter drinks nibble I adapted the foccacia recipe from the Panasonic BM book and our friends thought that was superb. I also made French bread to go with the soup. For the main course I did chicken in a tomato and mozzarella sauce which, again went down a treat.

Once again, many thanks.

Boomdocker

That sounds lovely. You do realise that you will never eat tinned soup again don't you? lol. Home made soup is smashing and you just can't beat it. Glad it went so well for you.