Brolloli Gruyere Soup

When I got the Modernest Cuisine At Home cookbook, I was overwhelmed. Bringing science into the kitchen was very exciting to me. I grew up with pressure cookers, so that was not a big reach for me as a tool, but I never had access to a chinois, using a fine sieve instead. We recently got a chiniois, and I have to say, it is a game changer. If you like smooth sauces and soups, get one immediately because it will change your life.

There are a few steps to making this dish, which will absolutely blow your mind.

First, you need broccoli. Trimmed, you need 500g, I find its about 3 heads of broccoli. You need to trim the brocolii down to floweretts, making sure to set a fair number of them to one side for later.

Then you need gruiyere cheese grated, in this recipe you need 40 grams. It’s not a good idea to overdo the cheese.

You need chicken stock, or my preference is chicken bone stock, but you priobably need about 2 cups worth to get the soup the texture you like.

The magic happens in the pressure cooker

To begin, you need a half cup of unsalted butter, 30 grams of water, 5 grams of salt and 2.5 g of baking soda.

Melt the butter in the pressure cooker, add the water, baking soda and salt that you have mixed, then add the brocoli, other than the floweretts you saved, put the lid on, and bring it to 1 bar of pressure for 20 minutes. When its cooked, cool it and take the lid off.

While its cooking you need to fry the saved flwoeretts till they are bright green. It works great when the oil temperature is around 200 F. They get bright green quickly so pay attention then let them drain on a paper towel.

You also need to roast and chop hazelnuts and strip the leaves off of thyme stalks.

Back to the pressure cooker.

Use and immersion blender, and blend the cooked broccoli. This works with just 30g of water because the water content of the broccoli allows it to cook correctly.

Add chicken stock till you are satisfied with the consitency.

Then run it all through the chenois.

Bring it to a good simmer adding the cheese and chicken stock as needed till you are happy with the consistency.

Serve it with the broccoli, hazelnuts and trhyme leaves as illustrated. We also make garlic bread out of toasted bagettes that I rub a clove of garlic over.

It is an absolutely the best dish of soup I have ever had in my 67 years on the planet.