Creamy Sunroot Soup

Ok - my NEW JOB is now official and confirmed and so I have nothing else on my mind than celebrating :-)

Whenever compiling a festive menu for a precious visitor or a real gourmet, I always think of this one.... ....and the story behind it.

Shortly after I joined our company, I was asked to organise a team building. Me being always up for fun, I thought that was a real cool task. I googled a few places to consider and ran into a food house that specialised in organising company events. Now you could count all the nanoseconds that passed from the time I saw the offer until I said OK to it on one hand :-) Kitchen, cooking, food - that was it.

The event was fun - we were split into a few groups and had to guess different spices by their smell and different beers by their main brewing ingredients :-) My biggest challenge was recognising caraway seeds - I thought they were cumin seeds (other than that I was goood :-)

Anyway, afterwards we were invited to a table and served a wonderful 5-course dinner. It was absolutely delicious, but their starter - the soup was absolutely to die for!

After the dinner, when things calmed down and the chef was just standing around, I gathered all my charm to convince him that giving me his super wonderful recipe for his sunroot soup was a really good idea ;-)

This soup is a slight adaption to his - still untouchably perfect...

The main ingredient is sunroot or jerusalem artichokes (or "fartychokes" as the chef calls them as they do make you .... well whatever the name implies :-)

CREAMY SUNROOT SOUP:

• 800g cubed sunroot
• 200g chopped onions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 500ml vegetable stock
• 2 sprigs thyme
• 150ml cream
• 1 tbsp butter
• salt
• black pepper
• lemon juice to taste
  

• To garnish:
• 100g sunroot
• 200g bacon
• 1/2 bunch chives

Scrape and cube the sunroot, chop the onions and the garlic. In a pan, heat the butter and add the onions and the garlic. Sautee until golden. Add the cubed sunroot and stir-fry a bit. Add the thyme and the veggie stock. Cover and cook until the sunroot is done.

Strain the remaining water, discard the thyme sprigs and mash the soup. Add the cream and mix thoroughly. Bring to boil, adjust salt and pepper to taste, add the lemon juice and set off the fire.

In the meantime chop the sunroot, the bacon and the chives into small cubes. Fry the bacon pieces and mix with the rest in a bowl.

To serve, pour a big laddle into a soup plate and garnish with the mixture. Enjoy :-)