Carrot soup

Carrot soup. I know it sounds wierd, but try me on this one.

I had the opportunity to meet a talented caterer turned grad student last fall while working on a commercial shoot, and she made this amazing carrot soup. It was light but full of flavor, and we had to get the recipe.

Finally, after some work on reducing the recipe to a normal-sized batch, she finally shared it. I tried it without the curry, and it worked great, too. A tip from her to get you started:

There are no hard and fast rules about ingredients. That’s the beauty of soups –you adjust to your taste. Ingredient quality, however, does matter to the outcome.

Sweeter carrots and onions result in a better soup. Carrots from the farm markets are the best. Really big, gnarly carrots are a little bitter. Don’t use precut and prepeeled carrots –they are tasteless.

Allison's Carrot Soup

1 lb. carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 large sweet onion, chopped
12 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. curry powder
2 tsp. minced ginger root
2-3 c. low sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1 c. almond milk, approximate – may need a bit less
small amount olive oil to cook onion and spices
salt to taste, use coarse salt at end of cooking process

Over medium heat cook onions in olive oil until golden but not browned. Add garlic, ginger root and curry powder and saute a minute or two longer. Don’t let curry powder and garlic burn –smells hellatious, so stir frequently. Meanwhile in saucepan bring broth and carrots to a boil and cook until tender, not crisp tender but soft so they blend well.

Cool contents of both pans then add an amount of both to the blender with a quantity of almond milk –go easy on the milk as too much thins out soup and makes it bland. If the soup remains too thick add more chicken broth to the blender. Once carrots and onions are blended add them back into saucepan and reheat over low heat.

Instead of croutons or crackers serve with roasted pumpkin seeds.