Asparagus soup

I love asparagus. It's really one of the very first signs on spring, and seeing those green stalks at the market remind me of many more good things to come.

I've made a lot of asparagus soup in my day, and this one had much more veggie content than I'm used to. It's good, but not spectacular. Part of the problem, I think, is that I found it quite salty, due to the boxed chicken stock I bought. Usually I rely on my own stock, or stuff I buy from the butcher shop. Both are much less salty and I wish I'd used them in this soup.

Ah well, live and learn.

On to the green stuff....

Onions, celery and leeks all chopped and ready to go. Think the final product might be a bit green?

Cooking down in a bit of olive oil.

Adding the chopped raw asparagus. More green!

And the final product, after a blitz with the handblender. Not as brightly green as I had hoped, and a bit stringy. Next time I'll not be quite so lazy and break out the regular blender.

Creamy asparagus soup

From Jamie at Home, by Jamie Oliver

Ingredients
800g asparagus, woody ends removed
olive oil
• 2 medium white onions, peeled and chopped
• 2 sticks of celery, trimmed and copped
• 2 leeks, trimmed and chopped
• 2 litres good-quality chicken or vegetable stock, preferably organic
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 10 small very fresh free-range or organic eggs *I didn't do the egg bit
• 8 slices of ciabatta bread
• a knob of butter
• extra virgin olive oil

Chop the tips off your asparagus and put these to one side for later. Roughly chop the asparagus stalks. Get a large, deep pan on the heat and add a good lug of olive oil. Gently fry the onions, celery and leeks for around 10 minutes, until soft and sweet, without colouring. Add the chopped asparagus stalks and stock and simmer for 20 minutes with a lid on. Remove from the heat and blitz with a hand-held blender or in a liquidizer. Season the soup bit by bit (this is important) with salt and pepper until just right. Put the soup back on the heat, stir in the asparagus tips, bring back to the boil and simmer for a few more minutes until the tips have softened.

Just before I’m ready to serve the soup, I get a wide casserole-type pan on the heat with 8 to 10cm of boiling water. Using really fresh eggs, I very quickly crack all 10 into the water. Don’t worry about poaching so many at the same time. They don’t have to look perfect. A couple of minutes and they’ll be done, as you want them to be a bit runny. Toast your ciabatta slices. Using a slotted spoon, remove all the poached eggs to a plate and add a knob of butter to them. To serve, divide the soup between eight warmed bowls and place a piece of toast into each. Put a poached egg on top, cut into it to make it runny, season and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.