Smart corn cream soup with Serrano chips, roasted pine nuts and goat cheese

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 4 goat’s cheeses, e.g. Picandou, 40 g each
• 3 sprigs rosemary
• 4 corn cobs, either fresh or pre-cooked depending on the season
• 2 onions, white, size: M
• 3 cloves garlic
• 200 g mushrooms, brown
• 30 g butter
• 1 liter chicken broth, preferably homemade
• 150 ml cream
• 4 slices of ham (Serrano)
• 6 basil leaves
• 40 g pine nuts
• some sea salt
• some pepper, freshly ground
• some chili flakes
• some nutmeg

Instructions

Working time approx. 40 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 25 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 5 minutes

A wonderful appetizer – Spring/Summer 2011…

Remove the goat cheese from the refrigerator so it can reach room temperature. Then, finely chop the rosemary needles using kitchen scissors and set aside. Remove any leaves and strings from the corn cobs (if fresh). Precooked corn cobs, readily available in stores, eliminate this step. Stand the whole cobs upright on the work surface and scrape off all the kernels with a very sharp knife, working close to the cob. Always work from top to bottom. Please don’t throw away the scraped cobs—they add flavor to our soup. Then, cut the freed cobs into manageable pieces. Either with a very sharp knife or with brute force: simply break them into two or three pieces! This process itself doesn’t detract from the flavor. Peel the onions and garlic, finely dice both, and clean the mushrooms (never under running water, but roughly—but thoroughly—with a dry brush!). Roughly dice the mushrooms as well. Heat a very large pot over medium-high heat, add butter, and heat gently. Add the chopped rosemary needles, mushrooms, onions, garlic, corn kernels, and the roughly chopped corn cobs, and sauté gently. Sauté for about 20 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly. It doesn’t matter whether you use fresh or pre-cooked corn cobs. Add the stock and cream and simmer for another five minutes over moderate heat. Then remove the cob pieces and strain the rest through a very fine sieve into a second pot. Press out any excess using a ladle. Season the resulting broth with chili, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste. A slight spiciness is definitely desired. While seasoning, fry the Serrano ham in a first pan with a little clarified butter over moderate heat until crispy. In a second (non-stick) pan, roast the pine nuts without fat until golden brown. Whisk the soup again with a hand blender. Place the goat cheese in the soup bowl, pour in the churned soup, and serve garnished with Serrano chips and golden pine nuts.