A veloute is a smooth creamy soup. The name comes from the word velvet. And let’s face it, on a menu ‘veloute’ sounds so much more elegant than ‘soup’
One can make a veloute with other vegetables – cauliflower, fennel, asparagus, peas, broad beans etc.
On the Demuth’s course we made a celeriac version and here on the boat I made the carrot version as well as the curried squash one.
Thanks to Demuth’s cooking school in Bath for the inspiration.
Our ingredients:
300 grms squash, diced
1 T olive oil
2 shallots or 1 small onion, fine dice
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 T plain white flour, or cornstarch
1 ½ T curry powder
700 ml white wine stock
Salt to taste
Method:
1 Heat the oil in a large pan and gently fry the onions till they are soft and translucent but not browned.
2 Add the garlic and fry for about a minute then stir in the curry powder.
3 Stir in the flour and add in the stock stirring till you have a smooth sauce.
4 Add in the diced squash, bring to the boil and simmer till the squash is soft – about 10 or so minutes
5 Blend until smooth. Then pass through a sieve to get the velvety finish
6 Season to taste.
7 We served garnished with some colourful chopped vegetables and sprinkled seeds.
Notes:
1 When frying onions, it will depend on what vegetable you will use as to whether you want them to brown or not. With the carrot or squash, a little browning is okay. But if using light or white veg such as cauli or celeriac, you definitely do not want to any colour in the onions.
2 You can use a bought stock cube, but since doing the course I like to use a homemade stock. Recipe for this coming up soon.
3 We made this on board the boat where we only have a stick blender, so our texture is probably not as velvety as if we had used a high speed blender.
Bon Apetit!
