Monday, November 5, 2012

Crazy Corn Soup

Hale & Hearty is doing a special weekly soup in partnership with several renowned chefs in the New York area and the charity of their choice. This was supposed to start last week, but due to Superstorm Sandy, they pushed the start date back to today. However, I somehow got lucky last week when my local Hale & Hearty opened and had the soup. It was so good I ended up getting it again today.

For the week of November 5 through November 11, the special chef soup is David Burke's Crazy Corn Soup. From the website: "Renowned Chef David Burke has created this creamy, lush soup by blending farm fresh corn with Monterey Jack cheese and Yukon gold potatoes then adding in even more corn! It will make you crazy for crazy corn soup."

It may not look like much, but this soup is amazing

Luscious and creamy are actually the best possible ways to describe this soup. The blended corn and jack cheese balance sweetness and saltiness amazingly, and the potatoes add an extra texture to the soup while also adding even more body. The most amazing part of this soup in my opinion is the extra corn added in. Most corn in soups ends up getting soggy and mushy after being cooked down, but this corn somehow retains its crunch regardless of how long it's been cooking. On Wednesday I got there early and had one of the first batches of the soup. That corn was cooked through but also extremely crisp. I expected a slightly different experience today as I got the bottom of the pot, but the corn was just slightly less crisp. As someone who loves the taste of fresh sweet corn, I was in heaven.

Moving on from the obvious corn explosion, you can definitely taste the blended jack cheese, and as you go down into the bottom of the pot you actually get small chunks of melted/blended cheese which was an excellent bonus. Along with that, there is added salt and pepper, but I couldn't tell if any additional spices were added. It's a sublime soup.

Just in case you didn't get enough corn from the soup, David Burke has also helped whip up a corn bread that gets served with the soup. The corn bread isn't as sweet as most corn breads I've had in the past, but it's heavy with corn flavor and very delicious. On top of it all, they added a layer of baked on shredded cheese with a bit of spice to it as well. It's an amazing accompaniment to his masterfully crafted soup.

Corn bread, ain't nothing wrong with that

David Burke's offering certainly lives up to his lofty reputation, and if this first offering is any indication of how great this 6 week program is going to be, I foresee a lot of soup lunches in my future.

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