Roasted-Potato Fennel Soup

I find it hard to rate this recipe. The end result was wonderful, but the way there was exceedingly bumpy. First, this is again a recipe for the multitudes--3 quarts of stock, 4 pounds of potatoes, two pounds of fennel---a lot of soup! Second, I found the notion of adding a quantity of heavy cream to this very thick and rich soup inappropriate--and it just seems wrong to add it before the soup cools at all. Third, fennel is very fibrous and doesn't get all that soft and it doesn't pass happily through a food mill nor puree happily in a food processor. Fourth, the potato skins do not make for an attractive appearance or a pleasant texture--they are like bits of paper in the soup. I found that I had to puree the soup with my (luckily) powerful immersion blender and then strain it through a fine mesh in order to get rid of the potato skin fragments and the fennel strings and fibers. It was a tedious and messy process. All of this being said, the soup was delicious and having been strained, had a velvety and very pleasing texture, though I added milk, not cream, to the soup. In this final version, it was a very pale green, creamy and beautifully garnished with a scattering of the delicate tiny fennel fronds. I must say the roasted potatoes were fabulous--I could have stopped there and just eaten a platter of them. I think a stock could be made from roasted fennel and onion and then used as a base for the potato soup--the lovely flavor without all the work.