Asparagus Soup

Now here's a dish that my mom loves and actually requests me to make, well I consider myself lucky that I have at least one such dish in my repertoire!! The recipe probably comes from a vegetarian cook book that I looked up a few years back, this one is definitely a tried, tested and approved dish!

Ingredients:
Fresh Asparagus - 1 pound
Red Onion - 1/2 of a big onion, roughly chopped (or) Shallots - 6, roughly chopped
All-purpose flour - 1 tbsp
Water (or) vegetable stock - 2.5 cups
Milk - 1 cup
Salt, fresh ground pepper - according to taste
Lemon juice - 2 tbsp
Butter - 3 tbsp

Wash the asparagus and separate the tips first and save them for garnishing. Now, chop the rest of the asparagus into 1 inch pieces till you hit the tough, hard bottom, make sure to discard this hard bottom part. In a non-stick pan, heat 2 tbsp of butter and add the onion/shallots. Saute till it's soft and add the chopped asparagus and saute for about 5 minutes. Now, fold in the flour and mix well. Add water/stock, salt, pepper, lemon juice (in that order) and mix well, cover and let it cook on medium heat for about 15-20mins or till the asparagus is tender. Remove and let it cool and then run it in a blender till it's a smooth puree. Run the pureed soup through a sieve, add milk (you can pour the milk through the sieve, that makes the straining easier) and heat the soup a little bit (do not boil!).


Heat the remaining butter and saute the asparagus tips you saved earlier till they are nice and crisp. Add this to the soup and serve with some fresh whole cilantro leaves on top!