Recipe - Cream Of Lettuce Soup

1 pound Boston lettuce
1 lg Onion, finely cut or sliced up
2 ounce Butter
2 ounce Allpurpose flour
6 tablespoon Clarified butter
4 Slices white bread, crusts
removed, cut or sliced up into cubes
2 Cloves garlic, crushed and
chopped to a pulp
16 ounce Milk
16 ounce Chicken stock
Freshly ground salt
Freshly ground white pepper

Thoroughly rinse lettuce and remove cores. Heat a soup
tureen. Place lettuce leaves in a large, dry saucepan
and cook over medium heat for 6 minutes.
Into another pan on low heat, place butter, stir in
onion, and let cook until soft. Stir in flour, making
a roux. Cook 3 minutes while stirring.
Stir milk into roux and half of the chicken stock.
Remove cooked lettuce from pot, puree in a blender and
add to soup. Add rest of chicken stock and cook while
stirring for 7 minutes or until thickened. Season to
taste with salt and pepper. Pour 4 tablespoon clarified butter
into a small frypan and when heated, add cubes of
bread, occassionally shaking pan to prevent them from
getting too brown. Add another 2 tablespoon clarified butter
and garlic cloves.
Drain garlic bread "croutons" on a paper towel. Place
on heated serving dish.
Strain lettuce soup through a sieve into soup tureen
and serve at once with croutons.

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini