Roasted Garlic Soup (Secret Recipe Club)

It's February's Secret Recipe Club reveal day! In the Secret Recipe Club, members are assigned a food blog from which we are to choose and make a recipe, then we all blog about it and reveal our posts at the same time. Right now there are 212 members in the SRC; we are divided into four groups so that every Monday is a new reveal day. Since we're in Group C, today is ours, and the blog we were assigned is Heidis Verden (in English, it's "Heidi's World").

Heidi is from Denmark, and she loves to bake breads, cakes, ice creams and other desserts, but she also makes savory dishes of all kinds. Her blog is in Danish, but if you go to the page "Important: For Foreign Visitors!" you can find out how to view it in English (hint: it's much easier if you are using Firefox rather than Internet Explorer). Once we did that, we had a hard time choosing a recipe because there were so many and they all sounded so good. While we really wanted to try one of her ice creams, we thought we'd come back to those when it's a little warmer out. We didn't have a whole lot of time, so we chose not to bake anything. Since it was blustery and cold here, we zoomed in on the soup section and finally decided to make her Roasted Garlic Soup.

The most important ingredient: roasted garlic

We've made a similar recipe with garlic and potatoes, and were curious as to how this one would compare. We made a couple of minor adaptations based on what we had around the house, most importantly substituting madeira for Heidi's preference, sherry. The soup was fantastic, and even better when we had it again for lunch the following day. The texture was light, silky smooth yet it was completely filling and satisfying. The flavors from all of the alliums made it something that could be enjoyed year-round, and the madeira offered a unique hint of sweetness. There was a nice deep flavor that we guess came  from roasting the garlic first. We even surrendered offered a small portion to Joanne who pronounced it "restaurant-worthy." Yeah, even with its garlic-breath side effect, we loved this soup. Thanks, Heidi!

Cook the roasted garlic, onions and leeks...

...until they look like this.

Add flour to thicken the soup.

Stir in the warm broth and madeira wine.

Blend

Swirl in the cream and allow to simmer.

Roasted Garlic Soup

Ingredients:

4 heads garlic

1/4 cup olive oil
4 cups chicken broth

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 leeks, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/3 cup madeira wine

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon lemon juice

kosher salt to taste

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut off the top 1/4 inch of each garlic head. Place in a small, shallow baking dish and drizzle with olive oil. Bake until golden, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool slightly. Press the individual garlic cloves between thumb and finger to release, then chop the garlic. Pour the chicken broth into a small saucepan and set over medium heat to warm. In a large saucepan, over medium heat, melt the butter. Add garlic, leeks, and onion; saute until onion is translucent, about 8 minutes. Gradually add flour, and cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in warm broth and madeira. Simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Puree soup using an immersion blender. Swirl in the cream, then simmer until thickened, about 10 minutes. Season with lemon juice, salt and white pepper. Ladle into bowls. Garnish with chives. Serve crusty bread on the side and enjoy.