Poor Man’s Asparagus Soup

For those of you not entirely fluent in English, and yet intrigued by the (I hope) somewhat persuasive title, please see below for a Swedish translation. Basically, the concept hinges on not going as far as “slightly versified,” but stopping just short of “poor knights.” I am sure you didn’t get that, so I’ll leave it to my Swedish readers to fully digest.

Anyway, poor man’s asparagus soup – what the heck is that? We all know the lively meaning of asparagus soup, and if there is a poor man’s soup – isn't there somewhere a rich man’s asparagus soup? Well, yes there is. It’s called asparagus soup and it is made from fresh asparagus. Poor man’s asparagus soup, on the other hand, is made from salsify root. This root is filled with so much asparagine a man could walk from Iceland to Greenland without getting his feet wet. It’s cheap, it’s abundant, and you don’t need to speak German to get the season’s first.

After some serious peeling coupled with slicing, we kindly ask you to boil the salsify root until near unrecognizability. For the moment we have snowed in on soups being simple in construction to enhance the soil-to-bottle transformation, to use a winic metaphor. Therefore, just use water, cream, salt, and the soupy stuff itself. Foggedaboud potato, broth dices, onions, carrots or any other disturbances.

After roughly thirty minutes the sliced roots are considerably squashy. During boiling, many other scents fill the kitchen. First, pleasant celeriac bouquets, then we discover some Jerusalem artichoke. Very nice!

How long should they boil? Well, it is like when my students ask me about how many pages to write for each assignment. I always tell them, “write until you’re fed up with it!” It’s the same with the soup – boil it till you’re getting tired of it. It takes about 30 minutes.

Then pour everything into the blender and purée it. Pour back into the saucepan, add cream and water to desired density. Add salt and you’re done!

Och nu till mina svenska lyssnare: Svartrotsoppa – ett alternativ till svartsoppa? Inte lika blodigt, i alla fall! Soupe d'asperges de la Patch Pauvre, typ.

As you lingering English readers might wonder at this point, isn’t Swedish a rather dense language? ;-)