With Autumn in full swing, closing in on Winter, intuition sets in and I start making soup. Our most recent soup is a blend of tart crisp apples and sharp rich cheddar. The condiments for the soup are honey pickled apples, cheddar cubes and whipped cider.
The key to this soup is the cheddar stock. We take an onion and sweat it in butter and season it with salt and cayenne. When the onion is tender we add apple cider and cheddar cheese. We bring the mixture to a simmer
and then cook it for about thirty minutes. When we are done cooking the broth, we strain it through cheesecloth; this prevents molten cheese curds from getting lodged in our chinois. The resulting liquid is rich on the palate and full of apple and cheddar flavors. We use this stock to cook the
apples for the soup. The apples are then pureed in the soup and the mixture is strained.
And for the cheddar, it is just cheddar, tempered and cut into a macedon.
For the crisp honey apples, we marinated apple slabs in a blend of onion vinegar, honey and cayenne. We then vacuum compress the ingredients together yielding a crisp honey flavored apple with a beautiful translucent appearance. A bit of time under the knife and we get apple cubes.
The cider is whipped with the addition of Versa-Whip 600k and xanthan gum.
The sliced leaves of oregano pique the dish with green herbal notes and astringent savoriness. Upon eating the soup I now realize why apple and cheddar are often linked like peas and carrots.
