Bisques

Today it is very wet here in Kansas City after a couple rounds of heavy rain over night.  Some of the plants in my garden have been beaten down by the rain and are low to the ground.  Hopefully, they will right themselves soon.  

It seems like a good day to make carrot bisque.  Bisques are traditionally a creamy soup made with crustaceans such as lobster.  However, I am quite fine calling my carrot bisque by that name rather than soup.  It's not really a soup.  It's thick and very creamy, and to me it is a bisque.  Could it simply be called a "cream soup"?  Well, it still seems more like a bisque to me, albeit without the seafood.

Quite long ago I wanted to have a carrot soup of some sort, and so I spent some time experimenting.  And what I came up with was a combination of carrots, water, cream, broth (chicken or veggie), coriander, nutmeg, and salt and pepper.  Once this cooks for a long while, I puree the mixture until it is smooth and creamy, and then I cook it a bit longer to reduce its volume and intensify the flavors.

I had this idea of doing this same process with various other vegetables.  So I chose celery next.  That was a mistake.  Boiling celery in water results in an aroma which is not at all pleasing to me.  So I never tried it again.  However, I've also not tried other vegetables since then.  But I'm going to make an effort to do that over the next short while.  I can see beet, broccoli, or asparagus working well as a bisque.  Cauliflower might be nice as well, but I like to make that as mashed cauliflower dish similar to mashed potatoes.     

When I made the carrot bisque, I initially did it in small batches.  And then one day I tried to scale it up to a very large batch, but I wasn't as happy with the result.  Some things, I am convinced, are simply better when made in small batches.  This bisque is one of them.

Well, I'm off to cut up carrots now.  In a while I will have a wonderful aroma spreading from the kitchen.

Enjoy the final weekend of June, everyone.