Artichoke Soup

There's a story to this soup.  The lady who taught the Greek Cooking class always serves artichoke soup, even though she doesn't go through the steps, but will share the recipe.  The reason the chef does this is because her mother loved artichoke soup and she said, "I had the best artichoke soup at this restaurant, can you duplicate it?"  And even though the chef didn't like artichoke soup, she created a recipe to match what her mother liked.  For the beginning of each cooking class, the soup is served as a reminder that her mother was always encouraging of her cooking endeavors.



Nice story and the soup was excellent.  I wanted to see if I could duplicate it using her recipe.  I think I came close, but I don't know if I would ever make it again, because you have to babysit the stove and stir for and hour and a half.  I was running out of patience.  But I'm glad I made it.

It starts off with sautéing onions, garlic, then adding artichokes, stock and seasoning.  I drained the artichokes and I chopped them as well.

When the two soups are added, that's when you have to really babysit.  It will want to burn and it needs time to thoroughly cook everything down.

Each time I did a taste test, ok, the real reason is that I love artichokes :)  It progressively tasted too salty, but when I added the cream, no salt to worry about but man it is RICH.

I ended up sending half of the soup to my Mom, because there's no way I could eat that much rich soup.  Oh and the recipe calls for using a handheld immersion blender, but I don't have one of those, so this soup was a little more chunky.  I don't mind that, because I like my soup to have some texture to it.