Sorrel soup with salted lemon whipped cream

I love sorrel; it has a wonderful tartness that I adore. It is unfortunate that I cannot find it easily enough. Thank you to my neighbour, Robin Morris. We get some from her wonderful garden.

This soup is fantastic. It is a bit of work, but the end result is so worth the effort.

This cookbook has been on my shelf for some time now, and I have finally dared to cook from it. Each recipe is detailed, complex and involves many steps. However, the recipes are superb. Gabriel Hamilton is a self-taught chef who opened the famed Prune restaurant (now closed) in New York, which became a success and was very highly rated. The book is a compilation of recipes from the restaurant. This is a messy cookbook, the chef has notes scribbled all over the pages, images of tape stuck with changes in the menu, and more, but it is an insight into the mind of a brilliant chef.

For more recipes from this amazing cookbook, click here.

Ingredients:

Soup:

10 oz fresh sorrel. washed well and tough stems removed

1 large shallot, sliced finely

8 tablespoons butter, or half butter and half olive oil

Salt to taste

2 cups chicken stock (or vegetable stock)

1/2 cup heavy cream (or milk)

1 large russet potato, peeled and cut into small square pieces, about 12-15 small pieces. Save the trimmed non-square pieces separately.

Salted whipped cream

1 lemon

1 cup heavy cream

Salt to taste

For the whipped cream:

Zest the lemon completely. Add salt (generously) and the zest to the cream, mix well and allow the flavours to come together for at least 30 minutes, or longer, in the fridge.

For the soup:

Add the butter or butter and oil to a pot and heat on medium. Sweat the shallots and trimmed potatoes with a touch of salt until soft and translucent. Add the sorrel and wilt on a medium flame. Add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes. Cool and puree with a hand blender until very smooth. Add the cream and stir in until mixed well. NEVER boil the soup after adding cream; you risk the soup splitting.

In a separate small pot, boil the squared potatoes till they are cooked through, for about 8-10 minutes. Cool and set aside.

Assembly:

Warm the soup to hot; do not boil. Ladle into a bowl. Add 2-4 squared potatoes to the bowl.

Whip the salted lemon cream to soft peaks. Do this in small batches and work quickly after this stage.

Ladle 2 tablespoons of cream into the soup and serve immediately. The cream quickly dissolves into the hot soup, so get it to the table ASAP!