By the soup chef
(There’s a little food blogger in everyone just trying to get out.)
For dinner tonight I made a delicious soup. It was amazingly simple. Most of the ingredients came straight out of our CSA share, and the recipe came from the Blue Moon weekly newsletter. Thanks Kristen!
- Ingredients:
- 1 large celeriac, peeled, cut into quarters and sliced thin. (Ever wonder what to do with that celeriac? This is it!)
- 3 Tablespoons olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 cup carrot coins
- 1 leek, sliced into thin rounds. (Okay, I had small leeks so I used two, but I had huge garlic cloves so I only used one. I finally learned the thing about cooking is that it’s not organic chemistry… doesn’t require an analytical balance to get the measurements right.)
- 2 eggs
- A couple of cups of chicken broth. Mine came from a can.
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- salt and pepper
Heat the olive oil in a pot. Add the sliced and minced and diced and rinsed veggies and saute for a few minutes. Add chicken broth to cover and simmer for ten minutes or so, until the celeriac is tender. How tender? About as tender as the carrots. You want it all mushy? Simmer longer.
Break the eggs into a bowl and beat together with the lemon juice. Add a cup of the hot broth to the eggs. I added mine slowly and carefully while stirring because I didn’t know what might happen to the eggs and I wasn’t making an omelette here.
Return the blended mixture of eggs, lemons and hot broth to the soup pot. Season heavily with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
About half-way through this quick and simple prep, I stuck a loaf of crusty white bread into the oven to warm up. When I put the butter on the table the cat let me know I hadn’t fed her yet by making a run at the butter. Much yelling ensued. But eventually it all came together and we had a soup I was proud of.
In 415BCE, the Athenians invaded Sicily in an act of stupid aggression that wasn’t matched until Bush and the US neocon cabal decided it would be a good idea to project American power into Southwest Asia and nail down control of the Iraq oil supplies. I’ve read Thucydides on the Athenian incursion and he doesn’t mention Celeriac Avgolemono, but he should. This wholesome and healthy dish was the only good that the Athenians realized from their imperialist aggression. Some aver that the Hellenistic settlement of Naxos by the Chalcidians gave the western world that eponymous gastronomic delight, nachos. Thucydides again is woefully short of information on the matter, as is Wikipedia.
Regardless, Avgolemono is as good as chicken soup in the battle against summer colds and the creeping crud that dogs the heels of the techno road warriors of today. If you’re feeling a little under the weather, nothing will perk you up like a nice bowl of Celeriac Avgolemono.
OMG NOW COME OVER HERE AND MAKE IT!!!
i think my grandma did something like this. is it still ok to use eggs like this what with the bird flew?
You should throw the shells out. Also, I brought the whole thing back to a simmer before serving because I’m not a big raw egg kind of guy.
although you are making me Very Hungry, there is someone here waiting to use the internets. the single internets terminal in this tourist information booth… i am pretending not to notice. he is pretending to be patient. we are actors, all. mmm, celeriac. we make a celeriac salad… sort of like a cole slaw. very good.
so … nobody’s going to tell me what celeriac is?
god i must be sooo unhip.
“It is not as popular as other root vegetables, especially in the western hemisphere, very possibly because of its garish appearance before cleaning: it has been described as “a vegetable octopus” in reference to the tangle of rootlets that grow at the base.”
It’s the root vegetable that in terms of looks combines the best of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the worst of Cthulu.
In terms of taste and texture, it is a combination of kohlrabi and celery, sort of.
I knew you had a little food blogger in you.