Flavor of Summer

I love the seasonal food. Spring is full of green goodies, the best salads of young spinach, red radish and anything that announcing new life delivered by early sun. Summer brings strawberries, cherries and asparagus. All these remind me of my grannie standing in the kitchen, stirring in a huge pot exactly like a witch in Shakespearean play when making her magic. 

One of her extraordinary charms were asparagus soup. Asparagus is the royal vegetable, very sophisticated. It appears suddenly sometime in late May, stays with us until July and vanish for the rest of the year. I love white asparagus, thicker and harder than its green cousin, way more distinct in flavor and very fleshy. I’ve never seen any white in Ireland, but the green one was very present on the shelf in my local grocery shop. I took three packs and run home, dreaming of reproducing the flavor of my childhood.

Before you cook asparagus remember to break the end off of it, as it is very hard, “uncookable” and uneatable. It’s about 1 inch /2.5 cm. Don’t need the knife, simply keep the end in hand and break it off – it breaks exactly in the part where asparagus gets soft and tender.

Asparagus soup

3 packs green asparagus

2 bunches dill

0.5-0.7 kg baby potatoes

1.5l boiling vegetable broth

half glass unsweetened almond milk (or any veg milk)

half glass of inactive yeasts flakes

salt

fleshly grounded pepper

• .      Cut potatoes in small parts and put into boiling veg broth. Cook around 7 minutes on medium heat.
• .      Cut asparagus in small pieces 2.5cm/1 inch long and put to veg broth and potatoes. Add milk and inactive yeasts flakes. Cook for another 10 min.
• .      Chop dill and add into the soup. Season with pepper and salt (I like it bit spicy, but not too much. Don’t kill asparagus flavor!)
•     Share with Friends :)
•     Bon Appetite!!!