Celery Soup with Stilton and Bacon

Still waiting for the summer to appear, this week, I'm craving comfort food.  Whist thinking about this, I started to crave tinned soup, so off to the supermarket I trundled, in search of two specific types of tinned soup - Heinz Cream of Mushroom and also Celery soup.

When I was at school, my house was just round the corner from the school, so I never had to suffer the terrors of school dinners (until I was much older, anyway). Instead, I used to come home and eat lunch with my brother - often whilst listening to Star Wars on the radio (in the days before the films came out on VHS, it was the only way to get my regular fix of a galaxy far far away...)

Regular fixtures on the lunch menu were Campbells Meatballs and Deep fried fish balls* - evidently spherical food was a big thing in the early 80's - as well as Heinz soups, which is possibly where I got my love of soup from in the first place.  Indeed, my brother, always a fussy eater had to be persuaded that mushroom and celery soups were chocolate and seaweed respectively, which he found much more palatable.



With all these memories in my head, I went to seek out a tin of celery soup, only to find that Heinz no longer make that variety (which makes a mockery of their '57 Varieties' slogan somewhat)

So, rather fuming, I instead bought some celery and decided to make my own soup, livened up with some bacon and Stilton just to give it a bit extra depth, which ended up being rather wonderful, although not much like the tinned soup of my youth.  So maybe we need to start a campaign to get Heinz to bring back the Celery soup, like they did with Salad Creme.  I'm also told that they used to make liver soup too, which I never had, but somehow seems redolent of 70's England, so come on Heinz, what do you say...?

*They no longer make Fish Balls either, at least not in the form I remember them...

Ingredients
1 Large Onion
1 Leek - White parts only
700g Celery
1 Large Potato
1 Large Apple
75g Butter
1.4l Chicken Stock
300ml Milk
Salt, Pepper and Nutmeg
Blue Stilton Cheese
Bacon Cubes

Method
1. In your soup pan, heat the butter and then fry the onions and garlic until they start to colour.

2.  Add the chopped celery, onion, potato and white parts of the leek.  Let them sweat and soften in the pan for 10-15 minutes, with the lid on.  Save the inner leaves from the celery for a garnish

3.  Add the Stock and cook for 30 minutes, or until the potato has started to break up

4.  Blend the soup until smooth - you may want to pass the soup through a sieve to get it nice and smooth.

5.  Return to the pan, add the milk and test seasoning.  Bring to a simmer and then serve.

6.  Garnish with crispy bacon bits, blue Stilton and the leaves of the celery.