Monday, May 07, 2007

Creamy Asparagus Soup with Crab

Copyright 2007 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
3 oz. lump crab meat, pre-cooked
1 bunch asparagus (about 1 lb.)
1 sweet onion, diced
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 (14 oz.) can chicken broth or 2 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
¾ cup heavy cream
2 T cilantro, roughly chopped
salt for seasoning

Remove the dry stalk ends of the asparagus and cut into pieces to cook easily.

In a saucepan, warm olive oil over medium high heat and then add onions. Saute onions until translucent (about 2 minutes). Add asparagus and cook for about 1 minute before adding broth and water. Bring to a boil and simmer until asparagus is tender. About 10 to 15 minutes. (Add about 2 teaspoon of salt to bring out the flavor of the asparagus while cooking.)

Take pan off the heat and add cilantro. With a hand blender or food processor*, pulse asparagus and broth into a smooth, silky texture. Add heavy cream. Check the taste and add salt if needed. Laddle into shallow bowls and garnish with lump crab meat in the center. Soup can be served warm or chilled.

Makes about 2 to 3 servings. Serve with toasted bread.

Pair with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

* When using a blender or food processor, never put hot liquid or fill to the top. Let the broth cool and put small batches to puree.

TIP: I recommend shallow soup bowls because the soup is a bit thin and won’t allow the crab meat to float in the center. So you’ll need to create a tiny mountain of crab meat, and a shallow bowl won’t require you to use a lot of crab to pile on. If you want to thicken your soup, mix about 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a ¼ cup of cold water and then add it to your soup during a slow boil until it thickens to your desired consistency.

7 comments:

Gitto said...

Hi! I linked to your recipe on my blog http://mat.feber.se, and used your photo to illustrate the post. Is that ok with you? Please email me otherwise so I can remove it immediatly (gittogitto/at/hotmail/dot/com)...

Love your blog by the way!

Single Guy Ben said...

No problem Gitto! I went to your blog and it looks really interesting but I'm not really sure what language that is. Is that Swedish or Dutch? Either way, there are single people everywhere cooking so I'm glad to share my recipes with my friends in Europe! :)

Thanks for reading!

Gitto said...

Haha, I'm sorry! Should have told you: it's the biggest professional food blog in Sweden (professional as in someone actually pays me for writing it - soo amazing).

Anyway, this was an asparagus special!

Single Guy Ben said...

Ah, so I was right, it is Swedish! That's funny that you said it was a special on asparagus, when I clicked on the other links, it looked like it was a special on GREEN food. Don't you think my soup is a lovely green color? ;P

Thanks again Gitto. Maybe I'll get more readers from Sweden!

Gitto said...

Yeah, it really has a great colour! Love the crab meat addition too - it really must go well with the gentle asparagus flavor... Oh, darn, now I start drooling. :)

My asparagus recipe (featured in the last link - the one that says "DN") looked quite awful... The photograpeher just shook his head and muttered something about it being hard to take a nice photo of asparagus covered with oatmeal porridge. But actually it was a great sauce: ground almonds flavored with white wine, shallots and olive oil, Just didn't look very fancy... :)

Unknown said...

Did you work at a restaurant at West Portal around 1999 or 2000? I remember having an asparagus soup on a prefixed menu there. It was delicious. Is this it?

Single Guy Ben said...

Thanks Sophia to think that this recipe is restaurant-worthy, but I'm not a professional chef. (I just call myself Chef Ben, because, well, I can.) I'm an at-home chef so never worked at a restaurant, not even as a bus boy. You should try this recipe out and see if it matches up! :) (Probably not though, because restaurants usually have really rich stock that they make themselves. But really, I'm all about simplicity.)