Mock Cheddar Cheese Cauliflower and Baked Potato Soup

I found orange cauliflower at Kroger last week. I bought a head to make soup with. Since I also bought some Russet potatoes for half price as a Manager's Special, I decided they would go into the soup, even though they were baking potatoes. And so I baked two of them in foil for an hour at 400 degrees. The cauliflower florets, tossed with oil and flavored with sea salt, went into the oven with them. They were in a foil covered baking dish, and it only took 40 minutes to roast them.

I had thought of adding cheddar cheese to the soup. I did not have to. The addition of a 1/4 stick of butter and 3 heaping tablespoons of sour cream made the soup creamy enough. And it was creamy because pureeing the cauliflower and the potato I scooped out from the potato skins caused a kind of alchemy in the food processor bowl. I pureed the vegetables for several minutes until they were the consistency and the color of melted cheddar cheese. In fact, it was almost the consistency of a dough ball. I scraped it into 4 cups of chicken broth which was already heated on the stove, and to which I had added a few cloves of crushed garlic and sea salt to taste. I whisked the puree in briskly and thoroughly, and let it cook for 10 minutes on medium to cook the garlic. Then I took it off the heat, let it cool slightly, added the butter and the sour cream, and whisked them in.

A delicious creamy soup without cheese and with minimal sour cream and butter!