Carrot soup

Carrot soup

I had been having stomach troubles all day today (the kind that makes you run to the bathroom about every 5 minutes.. ) but I did want to eat something healthy, hoping that it would calm my stomach down… Especially since I have to shoot a wedding tomorrow… Ooo, imagine how that would go in the middle of the ceremony; “Sorry, sorry to interupt but I have to urgently use the bathroom… Could you wait with the ‘yes’ word please?” Haha…. I can imagine the looks on everyones faces!! Not a good idea I guess.. I had still carrots in the fridge that I had been planning to use for something else but that never happened, so I figured I might as well make a lovely soup. And when I saw the recipe in Good Food, I figured it was meant to be..!

Making the soup was pretty straightforward and after some cooking time you use the stick blender to make it all into one creamy soup… O but first you remove the strips of orange zest that you  have put in at the beginning….. Huh? Oops…. totally forgot about them until it was all one smooth pulp already…

So my soup was a little more orangy then it was supposed to be and a little less spicy but that was probably due to my very liberal calculations. You see I was alone tonight as Tom would be out to friends, so I made this recipe for 6 into a recipe for 1.

I never really use a calculator and divide it neatly into 6 parts ofcourse, so I just roughly divided it by 4 I think it was. And well… it could have used a little bit more spices I think. But then it could also be the missing fresh lemongrass (I used powdered lemongrass, as that was the only thing I could find) and the curry powder. I used some sort of curry paste, which I figured would be stronger then the powder… but I guess not.

Despite everything that went wrong, it was still a very tasty soup and the carrots made it rather sweet. In fact it had a great resemblance to pumpkin soup.

Here is the original recipe for 6 (from Good Food september issue 09)

LIGHTLY SPICED CARROT SOUP

(serves 6, prep 10 min, cook 25 mins)

1 tbsp vegeable oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

knob of fresh root ginger, grated

1 red chili, deseeded and chopped

1 tsp mild curry powder, plus extra

1 kg carrots, trimmed and sliced

2 lemongrass stalks, bashed

2 strips of orange zest

400 gr can coconut milk

700 ml vegetable stock

1. Heat the oil in a large pan with a lid. Tip in the onion, garlic, ginger and chili, then cook for 3-5 minutes until soft. Stir in the curry powder, followed by the carrots, lemongrass and zest, then cover and cook over a low heat for 10 mins. more.

2. Give the coconut milk can a shake, then pour most of it into the pan. Bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 15 minutes until the carrots are really soft. Remove the lemongrass and orange zest (!!), then use  a stick blender or food processor to whizz until smooth. Ladle into bowls and top with a swirl of coconut milk and an extra sprinkling of curry powder, if you like.

O and I had this with a very unusual sidedish of braised fennel…. I know, I know… very illogical, but I will explain tomorrow!

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Tagged as: carrot, carrotsoup, food, recipe, Recipes, soup