This dish truly takes advantage of the colorful vegetables I’m preparing for my purple vegetable week, with my lovely purple cauliflower: a white cauliflower cream soup, spotted with roasted purple florets.
As I explained a few days ago, Eitan and I found ourselves at the Friday farmer’s market in the Tel Aviv port, and came home with a bumper crop of unusually colored vegetables, most of them purple. So now, I’m finding for creative ways to use them.
I made the soup itself from boring, white cauliflower, plus a very interesting English cheese I bought at the Carmel market a while back — a cross between cheddar and blue cheese, if you will (I’ll have to double-check its name with my cheese stand, but it appears to be Shropshire). I roasted some of the purple cauliflower and sprinkled it into the soup, for an amazing color contrast.
You don’t actually have to have purple cauliflower to make this — I should note that the color does not actually affect the taste, it just adds visual interest and drives suckers like me to make impulse purchases. Also, I added cream to my soup, but you don’t have to — I found that it didn’t add very much to the taste, it only gave the soup a nicer, whiter color. In any case, it’s an unnecessary source of calories.
These quantities make about 4 servings.
400 grams white cauliflower
200 grams purple (or other colored) cauliflower
5 garlic cloves
1 shallot
120 grams blue cheddar, or a combination of blue cheese and sharp cheddar
1.5 t salt
1/16 t nutmeg
pinch of black pepper
1/4 c cream (optional)
Chop the garlic and shallot, and sautee in a thick-bottomed pot with a little olive oil. When the shallot becomes translucent, add the cauliflower, coarsely chopped, and cover just barely with hot water. Cover the pot and let boil until the cauliflower is soft — 5 to 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, slice or rip the purple cauliflower into small florets, and put on a lightly-oiled tinfoil to roast in the toaster, about 10 minutes.
Blend the cauliflower with a hand-held blender until the soup is relatively smooth. Break the cheese into chunks, and stir into the soup — it should melt. Add the spices, and the cream (if you want).
Ladle the soup into bowls, and top with purple cauliflower florets.
