Celeriac and Pear Soup with Saffron

Winter is back again... Time to share one of my favorite soup recipes with you. I stumbled over it by chance last year and thought that the combination of pears and celeriac sounded interesting. Pears are probably my favorite fruit by now. I like them for their simplicity, they are not too sweet, they are not the star in your fruit bowl, yet, they are so comforting and useful in many ways for both sweet and savory dishes. This soup here means ultimate comfort to me and I have cooked it several times already this winter. Only recently, I began to add saffron which gives the soup this wonderful yellow color and makes it even more warming.

Recipe
(adapted from: Fool for Food and Home Made by Yvette van Boven)

1 onion, sliced
400g celeriac, cut into dices of about 2cm
1 pear, peeled, without core, in coarse pieces
30g butter, I used ghee
50ml white wine
500ml vegetable stock
200g cream
a large pinch saffron
salt
pepper
nutmeg

Heat butter in a large sauce pan. Add onion, celeriac and the pear and sauté for about 3 minutes. Add the wine and then the vegetable stock. Bring this to a boil and then, turn down the heat. Add the saffron, cover the pan with a lid and let simmer for about 20 minutes, until the celeriac is soft.

Add the cream and take away from the heat. Purée. If you want to strain the soup through a sieve, you can do that. Season your soup and add some cream or vegetable stock if you think your soup is too thick. You can add some roasted bacon to this soup to finish if you like and garnish it with parsley. Instead of cream, by the way, you could also add creme fraiche to this soup. When it comes to soups, I am kind of a freestyle cooker, so just cook this soup the way you like!