Sherried Turtle Soup

Method

Sherried Turtle Soup

For the roux:
Take 1/2 cup of the bacon fat and in a thick-bottomed pan cook the flour slowly stirring constantly to a brownish-brick red color. Set aside carefully and cool.
For the Soup:
In a thick-bottomed pot, heat the remaining bacon fat and brown the turtle meat and ground beef thoroughly. Add the bell pepper, celery, onions and garlic and sweat until translucent. Add the tomatoes, eggs, spinach, wine, sherry, stock, hot sauce, Worcestershire and bay leaves and simmer 1 1/2 hours.
Using a microplane and cut-resistant gloves, remove the yellow zest from the lemons avoiding the white pith; add to the soup. Cut the zested lemons and squeeze juice into the soup.
In a bowl, add the cooled roux, then ladle some of hot soup into the bowl whisking with a wire whip until a smooth paste is formed; add one more ladle to the bowl, then add the contents back to the soup. Season to taste with salt and pepper and simmer for 1 hour.
Note: this soup is best the next day; if doing so, cool the soup as quickly as possible and reheat slowly when you wish to serve it.
Before serving, remove bay leaves.
When serving, ladle the soup into bowls and top with additional sherry (3 tablespoons per bowl), green onions, parsley and a squeeze of lemon.
This recipe was provided by professional chefs and has been scaled down from a bulk recipe provided by a restaurant. The Food Network Kitchens chefs have not tested this recipe, in the proportions indicated, and therefore, we cannot make any representation as to the results.