Crécy soup

 Recipe from chef patrick

Ingredients :
A beautiful soup ; its name comes from a village close to Meaux (40 miles east of Paris) where the best carrots used to be produced

4 to 6 servings :
1.2 pound of deep orange (or even red) peeled and thinly sliced carrots
1 thinly sliced onion
1 small 'bouquet garni' (parsley stalks, 1 bayleaf, 1 thyme stalk)
2 liters (half a gallon) of cold poultry stock
90 grams (0.2 pound)of Carolina round rice (*)
80 grams of butter
table salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of caster sugar

Direction :
1. In a large saucepan, make the butter melt and then sweat the onions in it during 5 minutes. Add the carrots and sweat them 5 more minutes. Add the rice, the 'bouquet garni' and cook covered with a lid during 5 more minutes and keep stiring.
2. Pour the poultry stock and when it is boiling, taste it and season it to your taste.
3. Cook it slowly covered with a lid during 50 minutes then take the bouquet garni off the saucepan.
4. Blend thoroughly with a mixer and sieve it and, at the last moment, add a few pieces of butter.

Serve your soup hot in a soup tureen and put, on the table, a pot of double thick cream and a small dish full of grated gruyère cheese...

(*) 2 'schools' for the thickening of this soup : either cook the soup with some rice (my alternative) or add at the last moment some rice or potatoe starch