Sunday Soup: Celery Root & Yukon Gold

Since the weather's got cold, I've been making a lot of warm and nourishing soups. It seems like every Sunday our house is filled with a cloud of savoury steam. Condensation from whatever liquid comfort is bubbling away in the soup pot trickles down the kitchen window. Which is fine, because Fitzroy loves, among other strange things, to lick condensation off juice glasses, windows and ...well anything that attracts condensation. 

Soup's the perfect thing for a Sunday before the launch of another hectic work week, because it rarely involves the kind of intensive cooking and mess-making activity that happens in our house on Saturdays. It's much more serene. Perfect for that nesting instinct that creeps over me on Sunday afternoon - I can just leave it be on the stove, doing its thing, while I wind down and prepare for the coming onslaught at work.

This week the usual homey, Sunday afternoon craving for soup met its destiny in the form of a celery root scrounged up at the farmer's market. That, and some of this autumn's Yukon Gold potatoes.

Into the Sunday Soup pot, adapted from a recipe I found here, went:

• a lump of butter
• 1 yellow onion, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 or 5 medium Yukon Golds, diced and peeled
• 1 medium celery root (about the size of a large grapefruit, or approximately 450 grams), peeled and diced
• 4 ribs regular celery, diced
• 1000 ml. organic chicken stock
• sea salt
• 5 ml. teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (stripped from stems)
• lots of cracked black pepper
• 60 ml. grated Parmagiano Reggiano
• 100 ml. sour cream
• plus 15 ml. sour cream, thinned with a bit of water, for garnish

Fry the onion and garlic at the bottom of the soup pot until soft and starting to brown. toss everything else in, except the sour cream and Reggiano. Allow soup to bubbles away for about 40 minutes, or until celery root cubes are cooked through, adding more water or stock if necessary.

Remove from heat and stir through sour cream and Reggiano. Puree soup with a stick blender or in a regular blender (taking care not to explode the lid off it!). Try a spoonful, if there appears to be a lot of celery root fibres, you can strain them out by pouring the soup through a sieve. If you've cut the celery and celery root up finely enough, there oughtn't to be too many fibres. This makes quite a thick soup. If you like yours thinner just add a bit more stock or some water.

Serve in soup plates, with cracked pepper over the top and a swirl of thinned down sour cream, or regular pouring cream.

The flavour of this soup is really quite mild and slightly earthy-green due to the celery root. The texture is positively velvetty. If you like it a little thinner, just stir though a bit more stock. I reckon the delicate flavour and creamy texture would be a great match for a toasted crispy bacon and tomato sandwich!

Comments

[Sam]

i think celeriac is such an underated vegetable. I LOVE it; I was having trouble making it as a 'mash' for years until i discovered the secret was to cook it in cream instead of cooking it in water and then adding cream. So decadent, I dont do it very often. But it sure tastes good!
Your soup sounds delicious and looks beautiful.

[clare eats]

Celeriac is sooo yummy! it is soups like this that almost make me wish it was winter... and not 42C days like today!

[Marilyn]

I made this recipe yesterday evening and it is now my new favorite soup. I couldn't find any celery root at my local Publix so I simply added more celery. Whether or not I missed out on any extra flavoring I'll never know, but this certainly made a wonderful, creamy soup. Thanks!