Portrait of a soup in cream

Author Notes

Experimenting with ingredients and a great new blender this became the first course for supper tonight. There were beautiful shitake mushrooms at the market today which I could not resist. A vegan friend last summer had made me something like this with just three ingredients: the florets, another type of mushroom and the almond milk. It was a bit bland. In trying to jazz this soup up, I first used raw garlic, but found it too caustic. I introduced the clementine juice to temper the sourness.I like using a little ginger. Use just the cauliflower florets, no stems with this soup. This is really simple, but full of flavor. Arame adds a great contrast in color, texture and flavor. For a green variation, you can drop the olive oil but add a fresh avocado spritzed with Meyer lemon to the blender. That version is best with a chiffonade of herbs on top. I won't upload that as a separate recipe. —Sagegreen