Of course, human nature being what it is, I wasn’t satisfied
with just the soup, and wanted to garnish with something new and exciting.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything, so I decided to follow that age-old
advice which says, “when in doubt, bacon.”
I’ve garnished soups like this with bacon before, but never
tried toasting breadcrumbs in the rendered fat. Not surprisingly, it worked
very well, and the additions of lemon zest and parsley elevated things even
more. The only problem with a recipe like this is the next time I’m served a
cream of cauliflower, no matter how good it is, I’m going to be a little sad
there’s no bacon gremolata floating on top.
By the way, I realize there are no breadcrumbs in a true
gremolata, but I thought it sounded kind of cool, and besides, I’ve never been
that big on respecting the sanctity of culinary terms. I was going to go with
“baconized breadcrumbs,” but that sounded a little too much like molecular
gastronomy, which is much worse.