Working on the Simply Delicious Cookbook Project with Jamie has given me an opportunity to learn and expand my culinary palette. As with a lot of these dishes, I have never tried 3-19: Soupe Saint Germain before. This soup is made with ingredients I generally enjoy, but the end product was hardly enjoyable. The sparkling white wine was probably my least favorite component of the dish and not something I normally drink.
To the best of my recollection, I haven’t eaten many other classic French soups. My version of this dish may have been less than stellar due to a less than fresh bottle of sparkling white wine and my substitution of sour cream for cream.
Editor’s note: Potage St. Germain is essentially “pea soup”. There’s many variations out there, but not too many with sparkling wine in them. Since it’s New Years’ Eve, here’s an interesting alternative for all that Champagne you may have on hand…Happy New Year and we’ll see you in 2018! ?
This soup looks very bland in example photograph and even less appealing in the illustration above. The artist didn’t do a bad job, this dish is just that boring.
My ingredient list differs a little from the recipe due to dietary preferences. I substituted a mixture of lactose-free sour cream and milk for the heavy cream and half and half. Sour cream can’t ever quite replicate the taste of half and half and I added the milk to sweeten the sourness of the sour cream. The milk was intended to add in the flavor normally added by the heavy cream, but it just didn’t come out the same.
I didn’t take photos of the previous section because it was fairly easy stuff. I cooked the peas in a saucepan with some water, sage, and onion. The Vitamix made short work of puréeing the mixture. We got it at Costco during a closeout sale–totally worth the investment.
It’s time to thicken the soup. Combine the flour and butter together to form a paste called a roux.
That’s a good consistency for the roux. Toss that flavor bomb into the pot and start whisking.
Whisk, whisk, whisk. Keep going until the soup has started to thicken.
Here’s where you’d add the the heavy cream and half and half. I added lactose free sour cream and milk as substitutes.
When I went to pour my sparkling wine, I noticed it had gone flat…Whoops. I added it anyways knowing I was going to probably not enjoy this soup no matter what. Blech. Boring pea soup. Not even any smoked ham.
The final product is served with a dollop of sour cream on top. Lovely, eh? Not my favorite soup and I ended up dumping the rest after I finished this bowl. Not all of these recipes are Simply Delicious. The substitutions that I made could have been why the final product didn’t come out great. The soup was missing some of the buttery, thick undertones that heavy cream would provide–sometimes it’s just tough to make alternative solutions work right.
GRADE: D+
