I really like the East-European habit of eating soup from out of a bread. In this dish asparagus soup is eaten from bread. I really recommend baking your own bread. Even out of my simple oven these Italian buns taste very good. So don’t let not having the best oven discourage you. Or get the bread from a good bakery that makes its own bread if possible.
The mint I got from my balcony. It survived the winter and is starting to grow again well.
The link to the bouillon cube is going to winter bouillon cubes because I am still using them because I did not ran out of them yet. If you need to make bouillon you can of course use other vegetables as well.
Extra supplies needed: a hand blender
For 4 persons/ a pan of soup:
– 500g white asparagus
– 1 big or 2 small onions
– 4 cloves garlic
– 1 vegetable and herb stock cube
– 900ml water
– 100ml oat cream
– 1 tablespoon dried chives
– a handful of fresh mint
– black pepper
– 4 Italian buns or round bread that is large enough to fit soup in
– olive oil
Prepare the bread if needed.
Peel the asparagus and remove the bottoms. Cut the asparagus into pieces of around 4 cm. Shred the onion and the garlic.
Sauté the onion in olive oil around 5 minutes on low fire in a cooking pan. Add the garlic the last 2 minutes.
Add the asparagus, stock cube, chives and water to the cooking pan. Bring the soup to a boil with the lid on. Let the soup simmer for around 10 minutes.
Cut the tops of the bread. Hollow out the bread and make croutons by rolling small rounds of the bread. Fry the croutons 5 minutes in olive oil on medium heat until they are golden brown on all sides.
Cut the leaves of the mint somewhat smaller.
When the soup is ready, get some asparagus out of the pan with a skimmer. If you don’t have a skimmer use a serving spoon. These asparagus you will add later. Mix the soup with the hand blender. Then add a lot of black pepper and whisk the cream through the soup. Put the asparagus parts you had set aside back to the pan. The soup is cooled off a little because of the cream so warm it again for around 2 minutes until it’s ready to serve.
Serve the soup in the bread on a soup plate. Then wait a little. The bread will soak up the soup which means you can add more soup to the bread. Garnish with the mint and the croutons. Don’t use it all up so you can have more portions. With the top of the bread you can dip in the soup.
It’s a recommendation to serve the soup on a soup plate because your bread can burst on the bottom. Your bread will get soft. This way you can fill up your bread more times. If your bread is totally eaten you can also fill your soup plate with more soup if you want more. With standard Italian buns there is enough (approximately) for 1 more bread full of soup.
