La petite biscotte Now in Munich…

Simple Broccoli Soup

A few days ago I received one of Gordon Ramsay’s cookbooks I had ordered. Gordon Ramsay Makes It Easy is a collection of recipes for everyday life, which you can prepare without spending a lot of money or standing in the kitchen for hours (it says so on the book-cover).
As I’ve said before already: I don’t like celebrity cookbooks. Often you open them with high expectations and once you try out a few recipes you get disappointed not only by the result but by the time and money you invested.

I watch a lot of cooking shows with Gordon Ramsay and I’ve always been impressed by the simplicity of his dishes. This is actually the reason why I decided to buy his book and to give it a try, despite my prejudices. I randomly selected 3 recipes and will be trying them out over the next days, always posting about my experiences here.

When I went shopping today for ingredients, the list of items I needed to make those three dishes was 9 items long. Of course it always depends on how well your pantry is stocked but 9 items for 3 dishes is really nice, especially given the fact that I’m a student and that I must be careful with my budget.

The first dish I decided to try out was a Broccoli soup. Gordon Ramsay’s famous broccoli soup with 3 ingredients: Broccoli, Water and Salt! After preparing the dish I can say: it was quick, it was cheap and it tasted good. I wasn’t blown away but that’s mostly due to the additions beside the broccoli. Ramsay suggests in his book/dvd that for a “Posh occasion” you can add a strong goat cheese along with a few walnuts to the soup. Given the fact that I loath goat cheese I added some “Tomme Blanche” (which doesn’t have a strong taste) and a few walnuts. I loved the soup itself but the cheese bothered me more than anything and made the dish really heavy. The walnuts were ok but not a must either in my opinion. The soup itself though is a great way to eat broccoli which has a bombastic nutritional value.

Ingredients

• 1 broccoli head (nice green color, no brown spots)
• water
• salt
• olive oil to drizzle (optional)

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Preparation

• Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan.
• Take the broccoli in your hand, by the stem, and hold down the florets. Cut them off by cutting around the stem, turning it slowly as needed.
• Wash the florets and salt the water.
• Once the water is rapidly cooking, add the florets and cover with a lid.
• After 4-5 minutes, once you can cut through the broccoli with a knife, remove the pan from the heat and drain the broccoli through a sieve into a bowl. It is important to keep that water, do not throw it away.
• Put the broccoli in a blender and add some of the cooking water to it until the water is about at half height of the broccoli. Now blend thoroughly (starting slowly and interrupting a few times at first) until you have a soup with a very smooth texture. Remove the lid from the blender and add seasoning if needed.
• Fill a plate with the soup and drizzle a little olive oil on top.
• Croutons should go well with the soup, try it out!
• Serves 3-4

Enjoy