Summer Asparagus Soup

MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05

Title: SUMMER ASPARAGUS SOUP
Categories: Soups
Yield: 4 Servings

2.00 tb Butter
1.00 Onion, chopped
1.50 lb Asparagus, fresh
2.00 tb Flour
6.00 c Water, boiling
2.00 ts Salt
0.25 c Chicken broth, rich
-(optional)
2.00 Egg yolks
0.50 c Milk

Melt the butter in a pan big enough to cook the soup. Saute the
onions for a few minutes, until transparent but not brown.

Meanwhile, slice the asparagus into thin slices. Now add the sliced
asparagus pieces to the onions and continue to saute (over medium to
medium-high heat) for 15 minutes, until most of the moisture has
steamed out of the asparagus and the mixture has just barely started
to brown.

Add the flour to the onion/asparagus mixture and stir well to coat
each piece with some flour. Cook for 2 or 3 more minutes over
medium-high heat. Dump the boiling water into the asparagus mixture.
Add the (optional) chicken broth and the salt. Simmer for 1 hour.

Strain out the cooked asparagus, leaving behind a thin yellow-green
soup. Thicken the soup with the 2 egg yolks. Add the milk and reheat
the soup to serving temperature. Add salt and fresh-ground white
pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

NOTES:

* A light and simple asparagus soup -- Every summer, it seems, the
grocery stores are glutted with cheap asparagus. Most of the
classical
recipes for asparagus soup produce a hearty winter-style soup. Here's
a simple recipe for a delicious, light, thin soup that is more in
keeping with the time of the year that the glut occurs. You can leave
out the chicken broth to make it a meatless soup, but it does require
egg yolks. Yield: Serves 4-6.

* The slicing disk on a food processor does an excellent job of
slicing the asparagus for this recipe. You can use a food mill, a
china cap, or an ordinary sieve to strain the cooked asparagus out of
the broth.

* Don't try to make this soup as a low-salt soup by leaving out the
salt.
It will taste like dishwater if you cook the asparagus for an hour
without salt. Don't try to skimp on time by leaving the cooked
asparagus in the broth unstrained. It will ruin the texture.

: Difficulty: easy to moderate (thickening soup with egg yolks is
not a beginner's skill).
: Time: 10 minutes preparation, 1 hour simmering, 5 minutes
finishing. : Precision: Approximate measurement OK.

: Brian Reid
: DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, California, USA
: reid@decwrl.dec.com
{decvax,sun,ucbvax,cbosgd,pyramid}!decwrl!reid

: Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust

MMMMM