Cream of asparagus soup

A sure sign of spring is the arrival of asparagus at the Farmers' Market! The only problem? I LOVE asparagus...but my kids do not share my opinion. Hmmm...how to disguise it? I started with one pound of asparagus and chopped the bottom half of the asparagus spears off. After chopping those into 1 inch pieces, I put them in a stock pot with 4 cups of chicken broth (you could uses vegetable broth to make this completely vegetarian) and brought it all to a simmer. Cover and keep simmering for 20 minutes. On another burner I melted 3 TBSP unsalted butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Chopped one large onion and 2 ribs of celery (seen in first picture). Threw them in with the melted butter and cooked them until soft, about 5 minutes. While the onion and celery is cooking I chopped the asparagus tops into 1 inch pieces. And I diced one large rutabaga into 1/2 inch pieces (a large potato will work as well). Toss the asparagus and rutabaga into the skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and sweat the vegetables for 5 minutes over medium low heat. While the vegetables are sweating, your stock should be done. Remove the asparagus stalks with a slotted spoon into a colander placed over a bowl. Mash the stalks in the colander to extract as much liquid as possible and pour it back into the pot, discarding the mashed stalks. After your veggies have sweat 5 minutes, add about a cup of stock to your skillet, cover again, and simmer gently until the rutabaga (or potato) is tender (another 7-8 minutes). If all your liquid evaporates and the veggies aren't soft, add more. Remove from heat. Place the whole vegetable mix in with your stock. Now you could do this the hard way and scoop out portions of the soup into a food processor or blender and accomplish the task in a couple batches (and make quite a mess along the way). OR...you could use one of these nifty kitchen tools and blend it up right in the pot! The immersion blender makes it so easy! Add a cup of light cream (practically any dairy product will work here...heavy cream, lowfat milk, or half and half depending on your taste). Simmer for 5 minutes. Taste and season with salt or pepper before serving.

Now, this soup can be served right away, hot off the stove. But if you prefer to make this as a starter soup, it can also be made ahead, covered in plastic wrap, refrigerated and served chilled. Since this was our main dish, I served it hot. But not without garnishing it first with some fresh dill. Pair that with some bacon-pecan cornmeal muffins and you have a fantastic dinner that my kids ate up! Recipes adapted from Soup Makes the Meal by Ken Haedrich