Hello, everybody.
Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and
Brian’s blog about wine, food, culture, and people.
Here’s a post in a series of occasional articles about simple
French-inspired dishes and delicious wine pairings. Today’s post is cream of asparagus soup, what
the French call velouté
d'asperges because it’s so velvety.
Asparagus comes into season where we live in Michigan in late spring and continues
through the summer, so it is fresh and abundant. It was in season while we were in France
recently, so it was a common first course dish.
Mary’s going to be the primary author of today’s post to talk through
the ingredients and preparation. I’ll be
back with the wine at the end.
On our last couple of trips to France, Brian has raved about
fresh asparagus soup. Brian is a soup
guy, while I usually order salad. This
year, I decided I would try asparagus soup if it presented itself.
It was the special seasonal entrée (first course) the night
we went to the Auberge Saint Martin in Bouilland, a small village near
Beaune.
We both ordered it and it was
fabulous, so delicious and pretty! When
we returned home, I made an attempt at it as a first course. It turned out to be delicious, probably not
quite as wonderful as in Bouilland, but pretty good for my first try.
First, we made a trip to our weekly farmer’s market here in
Plymouth to find the best and freshest ingredients possible.
The ingredients are fresh asparagus, chopped
white onion, chicken stock (I make my own … maybe a post on that later), butter,
whole wheat flour, salt and pepper, whole milk, crème fraiche, and fresh-squeezed
lemon juice. You can use sour cream
instead of crème fraiche, but Brian makes his own crème fraiche from scratch
and it is so, so much better than store bought sour cream.
I started by chopping the asparagus in lengths of about an
inch or so, both tips and stalk.
The
asparagus, onion, and some of the chicken stock went into a saucepan and simmered until
the asparagus is nice and tender.
Brian was perched on a kitchen barstool while I cooked and
snapped a couple of photos of the kitchen counter. Here’s where we throw wine bottle corks until
we figure out how to recycle them. We’re
still working on that. Brian’s brother,
Phil, made a cork trivet for us, but we have way too many corks to do much of that. I wish we could recycle them somehow.
This picture of the glass of white wine? That is often the most important ingredient …
cooking wine (wine for the cook!).
The cooked asparagus, onion, and chicken stock go into the
blender to puree.
I use the same saucepan to melt butter and stir in the flour
and seasonings.
After that is blended
well, I whisk in more chicken stock.
When the mixture starts to boil, I stir in the pureed asparagus
and milk.
I put the crème fraiche in a small bowl by itself, or just a
one cup measuring cup like this, and ladled in a little of the hot soup to get
the crème fraiche to a pouring consistency.
The cream mixture is added back to the soup along with the
lemon juice to freshen it up and add a little acidity. At this point, it’s just stirred and allowed
to come up to serving temperature.
Garnish with a couple of steamed asparagus tips and a little crème fraiche and get
ready to enjoy. Wait! Brian has to talk about the wine first! I don’t know how he chose this particular
wine to serve with cream of asparagus soup, but it is a match made in heaven!
Brian here. I chose
this wine because it is light-bodied, very fresh tasting to go with the flavors
and textures of summertime cooking with fresh ingredients, and has refreshing
citrus and mineral qualities.
Muscadet Sévre et Maine is an appellation in the Loire
Valley of France, in the western part almost to the Atlantic Ocean. The grape is Melon de Bourgogne and the
producer is Domaine Bonnet-Huteau. The “sur lie” that you see on the label means
the wine was aged on the dead yeast cells before bottling, which gives it a
fuller, creamier quality. Drinking
this wine makes you almost feel the sea spray.
It has a clean, almost saline quality to go along with a lemony citrus
aroma and flavor. At only 12.0% alcohol,
it won’t leave you feeling dragged down or lethargic after sharing a bottle
with someone you love. And the best
part? It’s only $13.
A few fresh berries and a dollop of crème fraiche would not
be a mistake.
There’s Sonoma in the background, supervising the production
and hoping for a little leftover crème fraiche.
That’s our post for today.
We hope you found it interesting and appetizing. We’re already planning our next blog post, so
keep checking back for more wine, food, and cultural adventures at Cépage et Cuisine. In the meantime,
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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