Celery Root Soup with Caramelized Pears

A huge shout out to Adam Roberts, whose blog The Amateur Gourmet has been a constant source of great recipes, fun stories and sometimes silly songs, for pointing me to this wonderful soup recipe from chef Alfred Portale’s cookbook Simple Pleasures.

This was indeed a delicious soup,  and may very well be one of the best we’ve ever made.  If you want to make it too, here is the recipe.  The only thing I’d do differently is to add a little more stock to thin the soup a bit.

This is what I love about food blogs – they point us to great cookbooks that may have passed beneath our radar when they were first published, in this case Portale’s Simple Pleasures (C 2004). A quick perusal of the web finds several recipes from the book, which I’ve linked to below.  I hope to try a few more of them (The Filet with Madiera and the Spinach Custards for staters), and have added Portale’s book to my must get list and his restaurant Gotham Bar and Grille to my must go list.

I know, I know. You’re wondering how I’ve never heard of Portale or Gotham Grill before, especially since I claim to have lived here in New York for so many years. But you see, as much as I love food, I’m more a home cook in the Big City that a Big City restaurant scene player.

This soup may very well change that.

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More recipes from Simple Pleasures 

• Penne with Sweet Sausage, Fontina and Sage & Dandelion Greens
• Pumpkin & Caramelized Onion Soup with Gruyere and Sage
• Filet Mignon with Madiera Sauce
• Creamed Spinach Custards with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Parmesan Cheese