Safety 3rd

About a year and a half ago a friend of mine gave me a really cool soup cookbook for a housewarming gift. It sat in my car for a while, and then it sat in the kitchen for a while.....until about a week ago.

I finally got the motivation to make some soup. And it was so good I made it two days in a row!
The first day, I made a pretty bad mistake (hence the title of this entry), but the second day we improvised...

Asparagus soup with Parmesan crisps
 
1/4 oz butter
1 lb 10oz fresh asparagus spears, finely chopped (this is about 1 bunch)
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 cup plain flour
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup cream - I used heavy cream
3 1/2 oz fresh Parmesan cheese

• Heat butter in large, heavy-based pan
• Cook the asparagus and onion. Stirring over medium heat for about 5 min (until onion is soft)
• Sprinkle flour in pan and stir for 1 minute to combine
• Remove from heat and gradually add stock. Stirring until smooth
• Return to heat and bring to boil
• Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes (until asparagus is tender)
• Transfer soup, in batches, to blender. Allow to cool before handling*
• Pour blended soup in metal bowl for the meantime
• Once all the soup is blended, transfer back to original pot
• Stir in the cream
• Reheat soup on stove, without allowing it to boil

The next steps describe how to make a Parmesan crisp. But instead, I just grated a pile of fresh Parmesan cheese on top of my soup.
You might notice that this recipe is lacking seasoning. Normally, you would add "salt and pepper to taste" but my husband and I have different tastes. So what I started doing was not seasoning our food (particularly soups) while I made it. We now just season our own portions of food. For my servings I added sea salt and hot sauce, while my husband added a lot of freshly ground black pepper.

*So, I didn't fully understand the warning about letting the soup cool before you handle it in the blender. So, I went ahead and dumped boiling hot soup into a blender, sealed it off tight and hit "go". Within moments, the top of the blender blew off and I had boiling soup land on my skin and green soup covered the kitchen. While I immediately ran to the sink to cool off my arm, my dog got a head start on the clean up.

Besides letting the soup cool a bit, what we did the second time around was remove the little plastic center from the blender top (this lets air in and pressure out) and covered/held down the lid with a dish towel. I also realized my new found need for an immersion blender.