Cream of Broccoli Soup

For someone who is not a big soup eater I seem to be making quite a few soup posts. I tagged this post as mediterrenean but I could just as easily have gone for world food instead since this soup appears in the cuisine of many cultures, such as Indian, for example.

That said, the word broccoli comes from the Italian plural of broccolo, which means "the flowering crest of a cabbage", and is the diminutive form of brocco, meaning "small nail" or "sprout". Broccoli resulted from breeding of Brassica crops in the northern Mediterranean starting in about the sixth century BCE. Broccoli has its origins in the Roman Empire and was most likely improved via artificial selection in the southern Italian Peninsula or in Sicily. So, yes, it is a northern mediterrenean plant and particularly Italian.

Although the climate of some parts of Turkey is very similar to that of Northern Italy, here we did not have broccoli, hence also no broccoli soup, until the 1990s when it was first introduced as an exotic vegetable that people desperately tried to adapt to local cuisine until they realized that broccoli was not exactly a green kind of cauliflower and configured new recipes or discovered Italian ones. Today broccoli is no longer an exotic thing, it is widely consumed - also as the creamy soup described in the recipe below.


INGREDIENTS
  • 4 tablespoons butter, room temperature
  • 1 1/2 pounds fresh broccoli
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 carrot, chopped
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
  • 1/2 cup cream
Homemade Croutons:
  • Day old French bread
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
INSTRUCTIONS
  • Melt 4 tablespoons butter in heavy medium pot over medium-high heat. Add broccoli, onion, carrot, salt and pepper and saute until onion is translucent, about 6 minutes. Add the flour and cook for 1 minute, until the flour reaches a blonde color. Add stock and bring to boil.
  • Simmer uncovered until broccoli is tender, about 15 minutes. Pour in cream. With an immersion blender, puree the soup. Add salt and pepper, to taste, and then replace the lid back on the pot. Serve hot with Homemade Croutons.
Homemade Croutons:
  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  • Cut bread into cubes and place in a large bowl. Drizzle cubes with olive oil, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Mix well.
  • Spread seasoned bread onto a sheet pan and bake for about 15 minutes.


Shamelessly filched from: 
Thank you Food Network! :-)

Images: Unsplash, Pexels and Freepik.


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