Excellent and Easy Cream of Celery Soup

Recently, I came across this nice cream of celery soup recipe at food.com while searching for a way to use some leftover celery. After finding the recipe, I discovered that the celery had passed its useful life. Since I now had my heart set on this recipe, I went out and bought more celery. The recipe is from http://www.food.com/recipe/celery-cream-soup-22751.

Prep time is 10 minutes; total time is 55 minutes; and it produces six servings.

Ingredients

- 3 tbsp nutter
- 1 & 1/2 lbs celery ribs, sliced (cross wise. The celery will be puréed.)
- 2 large onions, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- 3 tbsp flour
- 6 cups chicken broth (low sodium)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 3-4 dashes hot sauce
- salt to taste
- white pepper to taste (color of pepper is important to keep creamy appearance of the soup)
- celery leaves to garnish

Directions
- In a large pan, melt butter; add celery, onions, and garlic
- Cook over medium-low heat until soft
- Add flour and cook 1-2 minutes over low heat
- Add chicken broth an bay leaf; bring to a boil; reduce heat; cover and simmer for 30 minutes
- Remove bay leaf and purée in small batches in a blender or food processor. (Instead of that slower process, I left the ingredients in the cooking pan, and puréed them using a hand-held immersion blender. That seemed to work just fine.)
- Add cream, lemon juice, hot sauce, and salt and pepper
- Reheat and simmer 5 minutes
- Garnish with celery leaves