Two years ago I was living in the Annex in a small one bedroom apartment that I had not-so-affectionately named “The Cave”. Inside this small apartment there was an even tinier kitchen, which I often referred to as the “coffin”, because the floor space was the approximate length and width of my body if I were to lie down and mummy cross my arms against my chest. It had a stove, a sink, almost enough counter space, and a fridge that couldn’t even open fully without hitting the opposing wall. Despite all of it’s shortcomings, I still utilized that kitchen frequently, and that was a good year for me in terms of experimentation. It was in this kitchen that I concocted all sorts of salads: roasted beets paired with blood oranges and spinach, my first ever Nicoise salad which soon became one of my favourite things to make and perfect. That year my parent’s bought me a crockpot for Christmas, and I was away making turkey soups, and slow cooking chicken thighs. My then boyfriend had been given a food processor from his parents that he never used, but I was more than happy to try making butternut squash gnocchi, along with blended soups of all kinds.

I was particularly happy with a cream of cauliflower soup that I came up with, as it was one of the first recipes that I created entirely on my own. In the original recipe I used green cauliflower, chicken bouillon from a stock cube, homo milk, onion, garlic, sage, butter, parmesan cheese, and a touch of freshly ground nutmeg. I remember serving and eating this with a friend and we both couldn’t stop talking about how good it was. I recently revised the recipe, and in this updated version I used my own chicken stock from scratch, my own blend of half and half instead of using homo milk, added in a potato for some extra smoothness, used thyme instead of sage, and keep with the addition of parmesan and nutmeg. The result? Even better than before!

I started my cream of cauliflower soup by making the chicken stock. The butcher next door was unfortunately closed on this gloomy sunday afternoon, so I used chicken wings from the grocery store to make my stock. This meant the stock was more expensive, but I made sure to remove the meat from the bones to keep for later after boiling them for an hour.

I returned the skin and bones to the water along with my mirepoix to simmer for a couple more hours. My mirepoix contained 1 medium onion, 3 celery stalks, 1 large carrot, 2 cloves of crushed garlic, 2 bay leaves, and a bouquet garni of fresh parsley and thyme.

While that was simmering away for the next two hours, I made sure to skim it regularly and it reduced quite a bit. I also prepped my vegetables for the cauliflower soup by chopping up 1 large potato, 1 medium onion, 1 large head of cauliflower, 2 cloves of finely diced garlic, and 5 sprigs of fresh thyme.

Once the chicken stock had finished simmering, I strained the it and got around 5 cups to be used in my soup. I then made my own half and half by mixing half a cup of 2% milk with half a cup of 35% heavy cream which would be blended with the vegetables in the food processor.

Next, I sautéed my onion and garlic together over medium heat until the onions were translucent. The potatoes and cauliflower were added to soften a bit before adding the chicken stock and thyme, and bringing everything to a boil. Once boiling, I simmered the vegetable for about ten minutes, until they were soft enough to be blended in the food processor.

Next came the fun (and noisy!) part. Working in batches, I ladled in the cauliflower, potato, and stock into the food processor. I added some cream, shredded baby parmesan cheese over it, grated nutmeg, and salt and pepper to season. I pureed each batch of soup until it was nice and smooth, which took about 25 seconds or so.

I returned all of the creamy cauliflower soup to the stove, to bring up the heat again before serving. To garnish, I shredded a bit more of the parmesan cheese on top with a small sprig of thyme. If you wanted, a big bowl of this soup with some pumpernickel croutons would be a special touch on a cool winter’s eve.