The recipe is straightforward. First, slice some carrots into pieces. Sautée them quickly with garlic and shallots in butter. Add vegetable stock and boil until carrots feel soft. Then, add some cream and purée everything in a mixer. Taste, then add salt, pepper, lemon or whatever makes the soup sing.
This is one of my favourite technique to showcase a single kind of vegetable, and I've tried it on lots of different vegetables before. Some good ones to cook this way are:
- Peas
- Leeks and potatoes
- Jerusalem Artichokes (my favourite)
- Spinach
My son loves raw carrots and he loves his "välling", a kind of loose milky porridge commonly fed to small children here in Sweden. I figured that this soup would be a neat hybrid of those two favourites of his so he just HAD to like it. Did he? No, not at all. He thought it was an awful way to destroy good carrots. So I'll be feeding him his carrots raw now onwards.
On a closer look the soup is not completely puréed, it's full of small chunks of carrot. That's what happens if you're not patient enough to let the carrots cook until they are all really soft and not just "kinda softer than before". The toppings, feta cheese and parsley worked out nice. And, some home made bread (this is the "10 Grain Torpedo" from The Bread Bible) was the perfect accompaniment.
If often think, that the secret for making good rood-vegetable soups is the part in the beginning when you stew them in butter (or olive oil). A nice even brown, caramelized almost... you can tell by the smell, that something important is happening there. Jerusalem artichokes for sure. Good looking bread too!
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with you on the caramelization, without it you get boring health food, but with it, a totally different, more luxurious, soup :)
ReplyDeleteThat bread was a hit, I'll be happy to send you the recipe if you like.