Cream of Celery Root Soup with Pears and Blue Cheese + Pigs in a Blanket

This is the best soup ever.  It was hard to find celery root around here, but we persevered and found it.  I got the recipe out of the Costco Connection magazine.  Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 ½ # celery root, peeled and chopped

3 fresh Bartlett or Bosc pears, cored and chopped, plus one more for garnish

4 T minced fresh chives

4 C low-sodium chicken broth

Salt and pepper

2 oz blue cheese, crumbled, at room temperature

Directions:

1.       Place celery root, pears, chives and chicken broth in a large pot over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. 

2.       Cover, reduce the heat and simmer until the celery root is tender, about 15 minutes.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3.       Carefully transfer soup to a blender and puree until smooth.  (I use an immersion blender to avoid this step.)

4.       Pour the hot soup into bowls and garnish with the crumbled blue cheese and chopped pear. 

With this I served a version of Pigs in a Blanket.   It is from a new cookbook called Basic to Brilliant, Y’all by Virginia Willis.  This was not as great as I thought it would be.  I thought the mustard seeds on the pastry would add more taste than they did. 

Ingredients:

1- 14oz oz box store-bought puff pastry

All purpose flour for rolling out

1 large egg

1 T water

6 fully cooked andouille sausage

2T yellow mustard seeds

2 T very fine yellow cornmeal

Creole mustard, for serving

Directions:

1.       Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silicone baking liner or parchment paper.

2.       Place the puff pastry on a lightly floured work surface.  Sprinkle the pastry with a little flour and roll out to a thickness of 1/8”.  Brush away any excess flour and trim the edges to form a 12” square. 

3.       Slice in half horizontally, then again in thirds to make six 4/6 “rectangles. 

4.       In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and water.  Brush the rectangles with the egg wash. 

5.       Put 1 cooked sausage along the long edge of the rectangle and roll up the pastry around the sausage and press the edge to seal.  The ends will stick out. 

6.       Place on prepared pan and continue to roll up the remaining sausages.  Refrigerate until firm and chilled, about 30 minutes or overnight.  Refrigerate the egg wash if keeping overnight. 

7.       Combine the mustard seeds and the cornmeal in a shallow dish.  Working with 1 roll at a time, brush the outside of the pastry all over with the reserved egg wash.  Roll in the seed-cornmeal mixture, and then place on the prepared baking sheet.  Finish all the sausages.  Return to the refrigerator and chill until firm.

8.       Bake until rich and brown on the bottom about 10 minutes.  Turn and brown some more until the pastry looks done.  Mine took 20 more minutes total and I turned every 10-5-5 minutes.

You can also cut each sausage into 6 pieces and bake flat if serving as a hors d’orves.  The brilliant part of this is to put on a wooden skewer and serve with mustard for dipping.  We were just doing dinner.   I think I am really going to like this cookbook.