Rosie Cooks French Laundry ... Again.

With the weather a bit on the cool side for the past few days, I wanted to make a nice soup to take the chill off. There's nothing better than a soothing, comforting soup to provide a nice counterbalance to the weather. I've been wanting to try the Cream of Walnut Soup in The French Laundry cookbook, and today seemed like the perfect time.

Here are my ingredients for the walnut cream: (And I basically halved FL's recipe.) toasted walnuts

heavy cream

milk vanilla bean

After toasting the walnuts, I chopped them.

Chopped, toasted walnuts go into a small saucepan with the cream and milk.

I split the vanilla bean pod, scraped out the seeds, and added both seeds and pods to the walnut/cream/milk mixture.

I brought the milk to a simmer, then reduced the heat to keep it just below a simmer for about 40 minutes, to let the flavors infuse. I strained the infused liquid into another saucepan and discarded the nuts and vanilla pod. Next, I prepared my pear puree.

Here's my poaching liquid ingredients for the pear: Sauvignon Blanc water sugar lemon

I brought the wine to a boil and added the sugar.

Then added the water. I returned the liquid to a boil and stirred until the sugar was dissolved.

I removed the pan from the heat and added in the lemon juice.

I sliced my pear into wedges, poured some of the poaching liquid over top, covered with a parchment lid, (although I don't know what purpose the parchment lid served) and simmered for about 15 minutes.

The pears went into my mini-processor along with 1/3 of the poaching liquid.

Puree.

Then, with the processor going, I added the heated walnut cream into the processor.

And here's the processed soup.

I poured it back into the sauce pan and heated it up.

The French Laundry serves its Cream of Walnut Soup in demitasses, but I'm not a demitasse type of person, so I poured it into the little clear plastic cups I bought at WalMart not too long ago to use for showcasing spices and small amounts of ingredients for blog photography. OK, the look disappointed me - the whole eating with your eyes first thing. You look at it and just think ... Meh. Maybe if I had had the walnut oil sprinkled on top as French Laundry directed it would have added a bit more to the presentation. But I had no walnut oil. I did, however, have Macadamia Nut Oil, which Xmaskatie brought me from her last trip to Hawaii, but I didn't want to co-mingle my oils. That being said, the bottom line is TASTE. And this delivered. Creamy, rich, nutty, velvety goodness.

The kind of smooth, velvety goodness that spreads over your tongue, coating it and teasing the taste buds, leaving them wanting more. Nuts, cream, wine, fruit, vanilla. My 5 basic food groups all in one tiny plastic cup from WalMart. Mr. Hawthorne asked me why the heck I didn't make more. Always best to leave 'em asking for more.