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Photo: Getty Images / Taylor Hill
There are two more ingredients that might need a little extra explanation. You’ll need a quarter cup of Wondra flour, which you can find on the flour aisle at your local grocery store. Wondra flour is a finely ground pre-cooked flour, which means it dissolves in liquid almost instantly, no sifting required. If you’d rather not buy a canister of Wondra, you could probably skip the special flour and replace it witha small amount of cornstarch slurry. Just mix a tablespoon of cornstarch with some cold water to create a paste and add it to your soup. If you want a thicker soup, add another slurry.
You’ll also need some cream sherry for this recipe. Unlike dry sherry or cooking sherry, cream sherry is sweet—if you don’t want to go hunt down a bottle,Cook’s Illustratedrecommendssubstituting dry sherry one-for-one, with one teaspoon of dark brown sugar stirred in for sweetness for every quarter cup you use. So for this recipe, you would use ¾ cup of dry sherry with three teaspoons of dark brown sugar dissolved in before adding.
Next, in your soup pot, melt 6 tablespoons of butter. Then add the leeks, fennel and carrots and sauté for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and tarragon and cook for another minute. Sprinkle in the Wondra flour—or add your cornstarch slurry—and cook for another two minutes, stirring constantly.
Add some of the sherry, the stock, salt, pepper and the Parmesan rind. (Consider storing your leftover Parmesan rinds in a bag in your freezer for moments like these.) Let the soup simmer, partially covered, for 20 minutes.
While the soup simmers, you’ll want to get started on this soup’s adorable finishing touch: puff pastry croutons. To make them, roll out a sheet of puff pastry to smooth out the creases. Using a cookie cutter, cut out 12 shapes and place them on a sheet pan. Brush the tops with an egg wash made of the beaten egg and a splash of cream. Then sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake at 400°F for about 10 minutes.
To finish off the soup, add the chicken, peas and onions and continue simmering, uncovered, for five minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the Parmesan rind and pour in the last of the sherry. Top the soup with chopped parsley and serve with those buttery, flaky puff pastry croutons. This cozy and delicious meal sounds like the perfect way to celebrate the Barefoot Contessa’s big day.
If you love this recipe, you might want to try some other favorite soup-ified dishes, like ourLasagna Soup,Creamy Mac & Cheese SouporStuffed Cabbage Soup. No matter what you choose, just be sure to raise a glass tothe queen of East Hamptonherself, Ina Garten.
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