Asparagus Soup With Poached Egg & Grilled Bread

After months of procrastination I finally purchased myself a quality food processor and blender and I can promise anyone who hasn’t bought one, they really are essential. Since I’ve bought mine, I’ve hardly stopped using it. I’m a huge fan of homemade soups and though I know there are plenty of fantastic ways of making soups without a processor, I’ve never really spent much time experimenting with them. That has definitely changed recently and my fridge has been fully stocked with soup this month!

This soup is perfect for either a winter or summer lunch, the vegetables used are really homely but when added together they create quite a light soup. I thought this soup was a lovely mixture of breakfast food with lunch, so we ate this at brunch, I really recommend it! 

The base of this recipe is from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at home. It is really easy to make and doesn’t take much time either. Carry on reading for the recipe!

 

Ingredients

2 onions
Plenty of Asparagus
1 Leek
2 Carrots
1 Stick of Celery
Garlic
Paprika
Good quality bread
One egg per serving

To Make:

Chop up some onions and add to a heated pan with olive oil.

Allow these to soften whilst chopping the asparagus,l eek, celery and carrot

After the onions have softened add the rest of the vegetables and cook for about 5-8 minutes on a medium heat until these have started to soften a little (Jamie Oliver recommends you leave the asparagus tips till later)

Add garlic (I used garlic powder) and paprika, make sure you use enough because the vegetables which are used here, are really strong

Then add enough stock so that all the vegetable are comfortably submerged, allow for a little extra which will evaporate

Leave the pan to simmer on a low heat for about twenty minutes

Whilst the soup is on the hob, it would be a good idea to prepare the toast/grilled bread and the poached egg. Just make sure you don’t overdo the egg, 3 minutes in boiling water at the most

After twenty minutes is up, add a dash of whipping cream (or similar), then pour into the processor and really blitz it

Add salt and pepper to taste (though I rarely do add salt to anything), also if you left the asparagus tips they should be added now

Ladle the soup into a bowl, you can eat the egg and toast separately or you can add both to the soup here, we added the egg to the soup and it worked extremely well

Since I made this soup I’ve tried it again with potatoes with similarly fantastic results.The only difference being that I cooked the potatoes and soup separate and then added the fairly mushy potatoes AFTER I’d processed the rest of the vegetables this gives the soup a much chunkier texture.

- Tom