Easy and elegant cauliflower soup, plus an old friend gets glam

By Victoria Abbott aka Mary Jane and Victoria Maffini

Don't miss the giveaway opportunity at the end of the post! 

You may remember our friend, Cauliflower, aka the Great Deceiver, the wonderful, versatile vegetable that can play so many different roles in so many different meals.  Well, our little veggie is all grown up and ready to party.  

So that's where my fascinator went!

A few weeks ago, MJ was fighting a cold and looking for soothing soups when she came across a very easy idea from Sue Riedl, a Globe and Mail columnist and food blogger who is brilliant and practical. If she ever publishers a cookbook, we will the first in line to buy it.

She suggested that cauliflower and stock could be cooked together and blended to make an amazing soup.   


 We said, Really? Wouldn’t it need a bit more than that?  It didn’t. It was perfect,creamy and filling with plenty of taste.

But when the cold cleared up we still wanted this soup and thought that we’d try a few more variations.  Here’s the result of our test.  

CAULIFLOWER SOUP 

You will need:

 4 cups good quality chicken stock

1 cauliflower, cut into florets

3 green onions, white and green, sliced (optional)

EVOO  (optional)

2 tbsp chopped parsley (optional)

Sour cream (optional)

Spicy oil (optional)

You'll have noticed that the only two required ingredients are chicken stock and cauliflower!

We do love options, so we chopped the green onions and sautéed them in olive oil until they were nicely caramelized.  We added a bit of parsley. 

Meanwhile, we cut up the cauliflower into florets and added it to a pot (4 cups) of good quality chicken stock.  We know it was high quality because we made it from scratch.  We always have stock in the freezer. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.  (We think you could make this with commercial stock or broth from a box or can).  

We boiled the stock and cauliflower florets together for about twenty minutes, until the florets were tender.  We stirred in the green onions and parsley. 

Next , and why is this so much fun, we puréed it with our ancient immersion blender. It was soooo good. 

You: How good was it?

Us: It was so good, we made it again the next day. 

It’s good enough to serve at our next dinner party!  

Not only was it creamy, good and easy, but it was gluten-free, dairy-free, low-carb and low-calorie, and without artificial additives. Since what we were really looking for was easy ways to add more vegetables to our life, we decided to add some sour cream (so much for low-calorie and dairy-free).

We also experimented with a drizzle of spicy oil on top. We loved our little heart design.  

So welcome our friend, Cauliflower, back.  We think she looks pretty good dressed up!

The only downside was we kept eating it and then having to make more so we could get the photos with the toppings.   

We had some other ideas, but we ran out of time, cauliflower and stock. So we hope you’ll suggest a few more toppings or ingredients in the comments.  

We’ll have a draw from among YOUR suggestions for one of our book collector tote bags, now including the cover for The Marsh Madness.

Victoria Abbott is the mysterious collaboration between the artist and photographer Victoria Maffini and her mother, the mystery writer, Mary Jane Maffini.  That's us! Strangely enough, our three book collector mysteries, The Christie Curse, The Sayers Swindle and The Wolfe Widow all contain lots of food.

The Marsh Madness is due out in September 2015.

BUT

YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT HERE!

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