Week 19: Spring has Sprung! Vellutata di Asparagi con Orzo Perlato (Cream of Asparagus Soup with Pearled Barley)

"Tender, grassy green asparagus, aromatic spring onions, and sweet fennel mingle harmoniously in this soup honoring the first flavors of the season. Adding pearled barley to the mix gives it a little more substance. Accompany the soup with country bread for a nice one-dish supper."
Makes 6 first-course servings

When my friend CS and I were looking through my Soup cookbooks a couple of months ago, she thought the asparagus soup sounded delish. I said I'll be glad to make it, but since it's in the Primavera chapter in The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy, it would have to wait till Spring. She thought that was pretty fussy and silly, but I assured her it would be worth the wait. Yesterday, we were discussing the fact that Spring was just around the corner, and she asked me if that means I'll make some asparagus soup sometime soon, and I said of course! This morning, I read online that today, March 20, 2011, at precisely 7:21 P.M. EDT (6:21 p.m. CST), the Sun would cross directly over the Earth's equator at the moment known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, marking the official first day of Spring. So, I asked CS if she would like some asparagus soup for dinner, and she thought that would be dandy (especially if I were going to cater it since she and MB had been busy painting a bathroom and watching March Madness women's basketball). I told her I'd be there at 6:00 with the soup and bread.

Today started out as a cloudy day, and the forecast was for clouds and rain, so I planned to have a productive day with some things I needed to get done in the house and for work, and I figured I'd go grocery shopping in the early afternoon and have plenty of time to make the soup. But by late morning, the sun was out and I decided to eat lunch out on the back deck and enjoy the sunshine and warm weather while it lasted before the clouds rolled in. I took the soup cookbook out to the deck and read through the entire recipe and made my grocery list. It sounded like it would take about an hour to make, so I planned to ride my bike to the store at 3:15 so I could be home by 4:15 and start cooking. I e-mailed CS to see if she preferred chicken or beef stock, and she said chicken, though either would be fine. It was still sunny and warm (70 degrees!) at 3:45, and I didn't want to go in but knew I had to get to the store, so I grabbed a couple of canvas grocery bags, put my saddlebags on the back of my bike, and off I went.

When I was in the produce aisle, I found the asparagus just fine, but that's as far as I got on my own. The nice young man stocking the shelves asked if he could help me find anything, and I said yes: spring onions ("not scallions, but rather young bulb onions still attached to their bulbs") or leeks, a fennel bulb, and pearled barley. He showed me the leeks, but he was stumped about the spring onions and barley. He went in the back and asked someone and found out the barley is in aisle 4, so he took me over there and we both looked high and low (neither of us knowing what we were looking for). Not finding anything that said pearled barley, he went and asked another guy who came and showed us where it was--right next to the chicken stock and broths, which I needed, too. (I was delighted to find low-sodium--which the recipe called for--and free range chicken, so I grabbed two boxes while I was there.) Turns out barley comes in a box and looks like oats--in fact, one of the brands is Quaker, and one of the options was "Quick" (cooks in 10 min.). Knowing I'd gotten a later start that I'd planned, Quick it was. Back to the produce aisle I went to get fresh flat-leaf parsley. I found parsley right away, but there were different kinds, and they weren't clearly marked. Fortunately, my friend AC was standing right there, and I know she cooks, so I asked her and she showed me which was the flat-leaf parsley. Next: freshly grated pecorino romano cheese. I found several kinds of romano cheese, including shredded (but not grated), but nothing that said "pecorino." After stewing for far too long, I settled on a wedge of Casaro Romano Cheese ("Wisconsin Quality with Italian Tradition") and figured I could grate it myself with my (still somewhat new) box grater. I couldn't find anything that said "country bread" in the bakery, so I decided Focaccia Asiago bread would go well with my Italian soup. I picked up a few grocery items I needed other than for soup, then packed my bicycle saddlebags with all the groceries and rode home, stopping at my friend SR's house to pick up two boxes of Girl Scout Cookies I'd ordered from her daughter.

I got home at 5:00 and started cooking the barley and prepping the veggies right away, and I e-mailed CS to let her know my ETA was now 6:30 p.m. The recipe said to simmer the barley for 45 minutes, but as I started to set the timer, I suddenly remembered I'd bought "Quick" barley that was supposed to cook in 10 minutes. (Good thing I remembered that, because the recipe also said the barley "should not be mushy at all," and I'm sure it would have been had I simmered it for 45 minutes!) I trimmed off the tough ends from the asparagus and discarded them, according to the directions. I cut the asparagus stalks into 1-inch pieces and set aside the tips, as the recipe said. I sautéd the veggies, sprinkled and mixed in the flour, started to add the stock--oops, STOCK. In my excitement to find low-sodium and free-range chicken, I'd inadvertantly picked up broth instead of stock. I'd already decided not to take the time to make the Brodo di Pollo (Chicken Stock) from scratch this time, but I'd fully intended to buy stock. Oh, well. Next time I'll be sure to look more closely at the box and get the stock, but broth would have to do this time. I added the asparagus pieces-except for the reserved tips--and the parsley sprigs, increased the heat and let it simmer until all the veggies were tender, then removed from heat and let it cool for 10 minutes. Then, in a blender, working in batches, I pureéd the soup. I panicked for a minute, realizing I don't have a blender and not knowing if my food processer can be used as one, but then I remembered my Cooks 5-in-1 Power Blender (similar to the Magic Bullet, which I'd called my Magic Squisher), and it worked perfectly for working in batches as I filled the five cups with soup and pureéd them one at a time. After straining the soup to remove any tough fibers, I returned it to the pot and stirred in the cooked barley.

At this point, the recipe ended with "season to taste with salt and pepper." It said nothing about the 1 cup of freshly grated cheese, nor about the asparagus tips which it had said several times previously should be reserved (not discarded). I looked at the picture of the bowls of soup that accompanied the recipe, and there were what appeared to be a few asparagus tips and some grated cheese floating in the soup, so I dumped the tips in the pot of soup, grabbed the bread, cheese, my grater, and soup ladle, and off I went. As I pulled into the driveway, I looked at the clock in my car, and it said 6:21p.m.--the exact time of the Vernal Equinox. Soup's on! Well, almost. When I got in the house, the table was all set and a yummy salad ready to be served. I put the soup on the stove to heat it up a bit, and when MB saw the green soup, she said we should have had it a few days ago for St. Patrick's Day! I pulled out the bread and asked CS how you know what's to be done with it since it doesn't say anything on the package about cooking or warming it. She said it would be good warmed up, so she cut several slices and put them in the toaster oven while I grated the cheese. At 6:30, we were eating salad, and the bread and soup were ready shortly thereafter. We each had our fill and had enough left over for another meal later this week.

The verdict: "DE-LISH", "Yuuuuuummmmmm!!!!!!" and "VERY tasty"! 

Yay!! Happy Spring!!!!!

"The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."
~ Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) Fisherman's Luck (1899)