... asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world.
Marcel Proust
It has been an asparagus-tinged week for me - first asparagus in the Savoury Brioche Pockets, then Rigatoni with Peas, Asparagus and Ricotta, and now, Asparagus Soup for French Fridays with Dorie. Phew! Luckily I like asparagus.
I found the steps involved in making this soup a little fiddly - peel the stalks; place the trimmings in cheesecloth and boil with the asparagus etc etc. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 pounds of asparagus, so peeling all of those spears would have sent me potty. However, due to the price of asparagus here (end of season) and the fact that I didn't want six serves of soup, I only had to peel six spears, and bulked up the asparagus content with some leftover tinned asparagus that I had in the fridge.
As expected, this soup tasted predominantly of - well, asparagus. There's a hint - if you aren't a fan of asparagus, don't make this soup. It was OK, but didn't light any fires for me.
To see what the other Doristas thought of this soup, visit the LYL section of the website.
Vale Hazel Hawke, who passed away yesterday aged 84. Hazel was the wife of one of our prime ministers, Bob Hawke. She reminds me of being a child in upper primary school, when Bob was elected PM, as one of our teachers told the class that if you didn't know the answer in the social studies test, write "Bob Hawke". I think our teacher was encouraging people to "have a crack" (to use a great Australian colloquialism) rather than to leave the answer blank; however, some students took him literally and wrote "Bob Hawke" as the answer to questions they didn't know, much to the amusement of our class. Good times!
