Soup de Jour

I am trying to keep up with my winter soup challenge, in which I ambitiously declared that I would cook a new soup every week. Soup is always a great way to use up left over ingredients. I have quite a few left overs from Christmas dinner including carrots, onions, and cream. These happened to be most of the ingredients in a recipe for velvet of carrot soup with browned almonds which is from my all time favorite chef Jacques Pepin. Jaques Pepin is truly my culinary idol! The soup for today's recipe is taken from Jacques Pepin Celebrates. The book features a festive picture of Jacques with a sparkler on the cover.

I halved the recipe for this soup, but added a little extra cream, because I wanted to use it all up before it went bad. And to be quite honest, who complains about a little extra cream? Nobody.

I took a photo of the recipe from my copy of Jacques' book. Is that against the law? If so, please don't sue me Jacques! I've bought all of your books and I am an ardent fan. Think of this as a big advertisement for people to go out and buy more of your books! I get the feeling that Jacques, unlike many other "celebrity" chefs, is genuinely about the food and not the fame and money so I don't think he would sue. I don't, however, know about his publisher. Below you will find the finished product of my velvet of carrot soup, the recipe and Jacques sparkler in hand.

 

I also made potato criques with creme fraiche and caviar as an appetizer. I bought my husband caviar for Christmas and I was looking for a different way to serve it. Jacques Pepin had the answer yet again! In his book (this is another shout out Jacques) Jacques Pepin More Fast Food My Way there is a recipe for these served with salad. Jacques also recomends for a "special treat" to serve the potato criques with caviar and sour cream. I substituted the sour cream with creme fraiche to make it extra French and decadent.