Cauliflower soup

This is a recipe from our local magazine, which this month had three warming recipes for warming up after having been to see the fireworks at Bonfire Night. Normally it's cold and wet and Lundulph and I will sit with our feet in warm water drinking whisky, however this year we've had a heat wave and it was 17 °C! Absolutely no need to warm up at all.

But I decided to try this recipe anyway, since I really do need to improve my soup making and we've been having canned soups for way too long. And I'm glad I did, this turned out quite nice.

Ingredients

1 large head of cauliflower (mine was 1157 g)
3 tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper
1 large onion
15 g butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 l water
4 vegetable stock cubes
1 tbsp chanterelle stock concentrate (optional)
1 dl boiled arborio rice
1 large clove of garlic
fresh parsley and chilli sauce to garnish

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C fan.
2. Cut up the cauliflower into florets, wash and drain.
3. Place in an oven pan, drizzle olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper, then stir round to coat the florets.
   
4. Bake the cauliflower for 30 - 40 minutes until it start going golden brown and begins to soften.
5. Peel and dice the onion, then fry it in the butter and olive oil until it goes translucent.
6. Peel and finely dice the garlic.
7. Bring the water to the boil and stir in the stock cubes and the chanterelle stock concentrate.
8. Add also the onions, rice and garlic and stir through while simmering.
9. When the cauliflowers are ready, add them to the soup and let simmer for a further 15 minutes.
   
10. Allow to stand for a few minutes, then using a blender, carefully blend the soup.
11. Serve with fresh parsley and chilli sauce on top.

This is very little effort for a very nice flavour. After blending, the soup was quite thick, which Lundulph seemed very happy about. I would have preferred it a little runnier. So a bit more water next time. I think the original recipe stated that the garlic should be fried together with the onion and I forgot that, but I don't think adding it later made too much difference. The original recipe didn't include the rice, but I had some left over from the cabbage rolls I made the other day and I wanted to use it up.