How to Warm Up: C&C Soup

Tonight I got cold. I have been quite lucky with the weather recently, because I am fortunate enough not to have to worry about getting to work, mainly because I walk and it takes about 25 minutes whatever the weather, or other daily banalities as I can do must things that way. Edinburgh is nothing more than an ice rink at the moment, this probably sums up the worst weather in 50 years the best, with temperatures averaging about -10 (14). Of course, there are worse places in the world to be but the bureaucratic efficiency of this country has shown its hand again. But the one thing I wasn’t expecting was the heating to break. That really got me today. And I really started to feel it. Even the dogs couldn’t keep me warm. The thing I turn to most when I am really cold is soup. I find there is nothing better than warming me up. I don’t really care what it is, be it tinned Tomato Soup, homemade pumpkin Soup or Beer and Cheese Soup, but it hearty soul food.

With that in mind I attempted to dissect the contents of my cupboards. There isn’t really a lot in there at the best of times, as my wife and I have a habit of getting every few days to try to keep things fresh and varied, and just what we are going to eat. I don’t often eat Celeriac, and I really enjoy it as an accompaniment to fish, The bitter flavour’s help give it a nice sharpness, and I love the combination of this with cider, it is common to see it with apples but I like the added sweetness of the cider.

Cider and Celeriac Soup

500g Celeriac
400 ml Cider (or more to taste)
35g Butter
400 ml vegetable stock
40g Onion (or 1 medium)
90 ml Double Cream

Melt the butter in a pan, and add the onions. Cook for a minute or so until translucent, and add the celeriac. Cook over a medium heat, ensuring the celeriac does not brown, for about 5 minutes. Add the cider and stock and simmer for 20 minutes. Blend. Stir in the cream just before serving to give it additional richness.

Perfect for when you get really quite cold.

Hefeweizen and Goats Cheese Soup continued…

Following on from my previous post about the Beer and Cheese soup, here is a pictorial guide to my efforts this afternoon. I changed a couple of things compared to the original recipe, as this was proving to be very sweet, so I had to find ways to cut through it, and jingle with the ingredients.
First off… Goats Cheese:

Lots of Goats Cheese

I am quite lucky really to have a great Cheesemonger, Ian Mellis, at the end of my street. They have a wide variety of Cheeses to choose from, highlighting the best you can get in the UK, and I spent an age tasting them. I plumped for the Golden Cross in the end, as it has a good richness to it, but was not too sweet.

Beer and Cheese

As I have mentioned in the original post I was going to make it with Stewart Brewing’s new version of the Hefewiezen. First time I sampled it in bottle, and the carbonation really cuts down the banana flavour. It works a lot better in the bottle, and will be something that I have to search out a bit more.

I decided to cut down the amount of flour and milk in the recipe as well, as I did not want to use as much cheese as if it was a hard cheese. The soup would tend to be a bit floury otherwise. I also decided to add a bit more mustard too (a further half tbs), and to season it at the very end, which helped cut down the sweetness significantly, and balance it a lot more. The key was to cook the soup relatively slowly which prevented it from spoiling. I also added the ingredients gradually to ensure they did not overpower each other – this was particularly important when adding the goats cheese. In order for this to avoid lumps too from the Goats Cheese I removed the wax, and grated it, breaking down the texture.

So here are some snaps:

Melting the butter: the start of it all

Stock, veg, flour

Adding the Beer

Let it simmer

Blend

Adding the Cheese

This turned out to be a very warming soup, the flavours of the beer and cheese worked well together, without being too sweet. My wife had a number of reservations that this would not work – Thankfully I managed to proved her wrong!

Soup!