Roasted garlic and cauliflower soup two ways

Yesterday I was feeling experimental.  I put a head of cauliflower and a head of garlic in the oven to roast.  My thought was to make some soup with them.  Little did I know that one head of cauliflower makes a lot of soup.  

Like, a LOT.  

Like so much that if I were to eat one bowl of cauliflower soup per day, I'd be done with it by Christmas '15.  

It's a lot of soup.

So I decided to split the base soup in half and dress it up two different ways.  Here are the recipes!

Roasted Garlic and Cauliflower Soup

For the roasted garlic and cauliflower:

• 1 head of garlic
• 1 large head of cauliflower
• Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut the top off the head of garlic to expose the tops of the cloves.  Drizzle with a little olive oil and wrap the whole thing in aluminum foil.  Slice the cauliflower into 1 inch thick pieces.  Drizzle with olive oil and salt & pepper and toss to coat both sides. Don't worry if it falls apart a bit.  Place it in a roasting pan.  Put the garlic and the cauliflower in the oven to roast for about 35-40 minutes turning the cauliflower once.  Pull it out if it when it starts getting brown on the edges.

T0 make the soup:

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion diced
• 1 small carrot diced
• 1 small stalk of celery diced
• 3 small or 2 large red skinned potatoes
• 6-8 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 1 head roasted cauliflower 
• 1 head roasted garlic

Saute onion, carrot and celery in olive oil over medium heat for about 2 minutes until onion is transparent.  Add potatoes and saute one more minute.  Add 6 cups broth and cook until potatoes are cooked through.  Take off heat and add cauliflower and roasted garlic (squeeze the garlic right out of the skins).  Whirl up the mixture with a hand mixer or blender.  Add more broth or water if needed.

Now that you have the base soup, you can come up with your own spice mixtures to add to it.  It is delicious on its own with just some salt & pepper, but here are two ways I came up with that worked really well.  I just took the whole pot of soup and split it into two separate pots:

In one pot I made Parmesan & Sage Soup by adding 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese and 1 tsp dried Russian sage. PS: My 9 year-old daughter tried this one and said, "Now THAT...is good soup.  It's perfect, Mom."  ***I'm melting over here!!***

Parmesan & Sage Soup

 

In the other pot I made a Southwest Soup by adding 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp diced chives and 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper.  

Southwest Soup garnished with salsa & chives

 

For both recipes, I just added the extra ingredients and put the soups back on the stove to heat them back up.

I hope you like them both!