Carrot and Coriander Soup

This soup calls for home-made chicken stock (though you can use cubes) and I actually happened to have some in the freezer. I’m a vegetarian, but my partner eats meat – we try to buy happy chickens i.e.: from a local organic farmer – and I made this stock from the carcass of a whole cooked chicken a couple of months ago. Stock is ridiculously easy to make and you can get raw chicken bones and bits from a butcher if you prefer. Throw the chicken in a big pot with some onion, garlic, carrots, celery and herbs like rosemary and oregano, top up with water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for a couple of hours, occasionally skimming off the foam. Strain and discard all the bones and veg. Tada – stock! You can let it cool thoroughly and then freeze. Anyway – on to the recipe. My comments are in bold.

Carrot and Coriander Soup (from the Soup Bible)

Use a good home-made stock for this soup – it adds a far greater depth of flavour than stock made from cubes.

Ingredients

Serves 4

50 g/2 oz/4 tbsp butter

3 leeks, sliced

450 g/1 lb carrots, sliced

15 ml/ 1 tbsp ground coriander

1.2 litres/2 pints/5 cups chicken stock

⅔ cup Greek-style yogurt

salt and freshly ground black pepper

30-45 ml/2-3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander, to garnish

1 Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the leeks and carrots and stir well. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, until the vegetables are beginning to soften.

2 Stir in the ground coriander and cook for about 1 minute. Pour in the stock and add seasoning to taste. (A bit of low sodium salt and some pepper was good.) Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the leeks and carrots are tender. (I accidentally over did it at this stage and simmered for about 30 minutes. Oops! There wasn’t all that much soup left and I could have added some more water, but left it as it was with the result that I had a thicker soup and a little less than I would have otherwise.)

3 Leave to cool slightly, then purée the soup in a blender until smooth. Return the soup to the pan and add 30 ml/2 tbsp of the yogurt, then taste the soup and adjust the seasoning. Reheat gently, but do not boil. (I puréed right away so I didn’t bother to reheat again as it was still hot.)

4 Ladle the soup into bowls and put a spoonful of the remaining yogurt in the centre of each. Scatter over the chopped coriander and serve immediately.

This was a really yummy soup. The coriander and carrot are sweet and the bit of cold yogurt on top was a really good contrast. I wasn’t super happy about the colour of the soup – which to be perfectly honest, looked a bit like sick. (In my experience, lots of puréed soups do ;-) The stock pictured in the book is really clear and their soup is bright orange and my home-made soup was quite brown which I’m sure is why. I give this soup a 4.5 out of 5 and a big thumbs up for being super easy. Next week’s soup is going to have pasta in it – yum!