Asparagus Soup

When I made the fabulous Osterpinze, there were a lot of recipes for asparagus soup on the various Austrian websites I read. It seems very much like I experienced in Bavaria, there is almost an asparagus obsession in Spring. I read through several recipes, but I didn't like them much and instead settled on this English one as it seemed to have the highest asparagus content of them all and made my way to the local Pick Your Own, to get some fresh asparagus.

Ingredients

350 g trimmed and washed green asparagus
3 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
100 g baby spinach
700 ml vegetable stock - stock cube is fine
25 g butter
1 tsp vegetable oil
Salt and pepper

Method

1. Keep about 5 cm of the asparagus tips and cut up the rest of the stalks into chunks.
2. Peel and finely slice the shallots, peel the garlic and wash the spinach if required.
3. Make the stock.
4. Heat up the butter and oil in a deep frying pan until it bubbles, then fry the asparagus tips for a few minutes to soften and give them colour and set them aside.
5. In the same pan, add the asparagus stalks and shallots and press in the garlic, then fry for 5 - 10 minutes while stirring occasionally.
6. Add the spinach and stir through to wilt it, then add the stock and bring to the boil.
7. Remove from the heat and blitz with a stick blender. Season to taste and add more water if it's too thick.
8. Serve the soup with a couple of asparagus tips on top.

This was a very nice soup, but really not enough for a meal in itself, a starter at best. I think it would also benefit from toasted pine kernels as a topping and possibly a drop or two of Tabasco sauce. The amount of asparagus can easily be increased and possibly a potato or two would provide more bulk. A nice fancy sourdough bread would probably be good too, like the original recipe recommends.