Soup and pictures

A little late but fuck it we'll do it live!  First off the soup recipe


ROASTED GARLIC SOUP
3 slices stale bread, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 T olive oil
1 T fresh herbs chopped each: 

• marjoram leaves/stems
• rosemary leaves
• savory leaves/stems
• tarragon leaves/stems
• thyme leaves/stems
• oregano leaves/stems

3-5 heads garlic, roasted and pureed
2 bay leaves
1 t black peppercorns
Kosher salt
1 C dry white wine (drink remainder while cooking)
8 C Basic Vegetable Stock (see below)
4 C cream
8 oz Gruyere cheese, grated for garnish

Preheat oven to 550 F and sip wine.

1. Toss bread cubes with 2T olive oil. Spread out on baking sheet and toast until golden/crispy for 5-10 min. Sip wine.
2. Add herbs, pureed garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, pinch of salt, wine (continuing to sip the remainder) and stock to soup pot. Mix well and let it reach boil over med.high heat. Once boiling, lower heat to med. low and simmer 30 min.
3. Pour soup slowly through strainer and into storage container. Discard herbs from strainer. Clean out soup pot. Refill with strained soup. Add cream, stir well and let soup reach a simmer. Sip wine.
4. Serve topped with few croutons and nice portion of grated cheese.
5. Open new bottle of wine to serve with soup.

So first up some pictures of roasted garlic and thoughts.  If you read around on the internet you find people recommending your roast your garlic in muffin tins.  I will say that it does make the cleanup pretty easy, but the garlic cloves in contact with the outside edge gets over done and very brown.

Here is some of the garlic peeled and getting ready for the soup pot.  I roasted the garlic the night before so that I could get the soup done more quickly for company.

Once the soup and bread crumbs are in the bowl I put the cheese on top and put it into the oven on broil.  It turned out less bubbly than I like but I had to turn down the oven to do my candied pecans for the salad and didn't wait for it to heat back up to melt the cheese.   The salad was a spinach salad with craisins, candied pecans and a strawberry vinaigrette.