cream of poblano soup

This is for commenter happyfeet, who mentioned somewhere in the comments at P.W. his attempt to find the Campbell's version of cream of poblano soup. It seemed like a wonderful idea.

The name suggests its solution. Any vegetable, any vegetable, can be featured in a cream soup prepared along with a stock of some sort, usually chicken but sometimes beef or vegetable, it's a matter of preference, and and other vegetable flavor elements, a mirepoix in French, sofrito in Spanish. The initial vegetable elements may vary widely but often include onion, celery, and carrot. Sofritos usually use green bell pepper, in this case, very heavy on poblano, which accounts for its green shade.

I have a problem roasting chiles at home, but yesterday I sautéed strips of red bell pepper in olive oil, and I must say, they were perfectly delicious at each stage all the way through all the way to burnt skin stage. They just. keep. getting. better.

So that's what is done here, poblano chiles en rodajas (strips) fried in oil until the skin blackens and blisters. Leave all that blackened and blistery bits in. It's all very flavorful. Again, roasted vegetables concentrate flavors, adds flavors in fact per Maillard reaction, boiling vegetables dilutes flavors. It is simple as that.

I prefer soup to have identifiable chunks so a portion of vegetable sofrito is reserved then returned after the bulk is processed.

This batch the seasoning is basic, salt/pepper, cumin, and coriander.

Here, uncooked tomato to garnish. (They sank)

Chicken broth. It could just as easily be vegetable broth or beef broth. Fish broth, eh, not so much.

Chiles poblanos en rodajas. These are charred separately from the rest of the sofrito because they seem to need extra attention. It's not possible for me to roast these outside over coals or else I would. Fresh poblanos, as you can see. They need not be. Poblanos en rodajas are available canned, and I must say, they are mighty convenient.

The rest of the sofrito. This is a careless cut, the young carrots not cut at all. They'll be softened further with cooking in the broth. Not shown, garlic added at the end. I really should have added a bay leaf here but I didn't think of it.

A porion of the sofrito is reserved along with a portion of the charred poblano chiles to add back to the final creamed soup, because that's the way I roll. I like chunky soup.

Vegetable sofrito cooking further with the chicken broth. Not shown: this, cooked vegetables and broth, processed to purée.

Puréed vegetables and broth returned to the pot.

Reserved vegetables returned to puréed soup

Cream added to soup. To taste. I started with Half-and-Half but that was insufficiently silky so I added an equal part of heavy cream, conscious that cream flattens the sharp chile and spice flavors. The result was closer to 1/4-3/4 and utterly delicious in a cautious delicate gringo sort of way.

Conclusion: This soup is fantastic. I'd be pleased to serve it for a dinner course, in that case I'd keep it simple and plain as this. It could be more interesting. I'd prefer it hotter, which is easy enough to do by adding additional chile types in any convenient form, but then it wouldn't be cream of poblano, would it? The flavor profile could be extended with the addition of fennel in the sofrito, bay, mace, nutmeg etc., and cilantro to finish. It'd go great with fresh homemade corn tortilla chips, or even regular corn tortillas.