Winter Soup Night

Cold January nights just beg for a nice, hearty bowl of soup. I had a good supply of homemade chicken stock in my freezer (and a pile of carcasses waiting to be made into another round of stock) and the winds have been blowing hard around here lately, so last night I decided to make a nice bowl of comfort for Kevin and me.

This time around I didn't improvise or make anything up. I used an actual recipe. I have long been intrigued by a recipe I saw in Food & Wine for a chestnut soup made with celery root and mushrooms. I still had a good supply of of those Hen of the Woods mushrooms from my brother and was looking for a good way to use them. I had never tried a soup like this before. Since I'm sure many people feel I'm too much of a picky eater and need to expand my horizons, this was the perfect soup to make. Chestnut Soup with Grappa Cream (without the actual Grappa cream) it would be.

Bacon is always an auspicious start. The recipe actually called for pancetta, but it seemed to be hiding in the store. I couldn't find any. This applewood-smoked bacon I bought was wonderful. It had the best bacon scent when you cooked it.

My less saturated-fat-laden ingredients. Here we have mushrooms, chestnuts, shallots, and the celery root. Celery root is such an ugly vegetable, isn't it? It ranks up there with jicama and rutabaga. What it lacks in looks, it makes up for in scent. I think it smells wonderful when I peel it.

All of the ingredients in a pot: bacon, celery root, shallot, mushrooms, brandy, sage thyme, bay leaf and chicken stock.

What did I ever do before I had an immersion blender? I shudder at the thought of having to transfer this whole pot to the food processor and blend in batches. All hail the immersion blender!

I completely forgot to take a picture of the finished soup in a bowl with the cream added. Doodyhead! What can I tell you? It looked like mushroom bisque. It tasted even better than your average mushroom bisque. The bacon added a smoky, salty dimension. The chestnuts gave it sweetness. The herbs added all kinds of fresh flavor. It was an excellent soup and I will happily make it again.

I didn't want to add the grappa cream on top as the recipe called for. This recipe was meant to be served in small portions as an appetizer and I was serving up big dinner-sized bowls of it. Kevin and I are trying to watch our weight a bit and adding whipped cream to the soup seemed like overkill. Besides, I didn't have any grappa.

I still felt like I needed to have *something* in the soup. I thought about garlic toast. Then I thought about how we're trying to cut down on our bread intake. I wondered if a soup filled with bacon, cream, and butter really needed anything more.

I settled on this walnut-wheat bread I found at Whole Foods. I just hacked off chunks and dunked them!

The next morning I made myself a nice low-calorie breakfast.

Open-faced bacon, egg, and cheese on grilled walnut-wheat bread. The extra fat is to keep me warm while working with my horses in the freezing cold.