Soup. In Summer? Yes!

I saw someone on Facebook mention making carrot soup, and despite the temperature being upward of 35C I decided it sounded really good. So I made some!

Soup in a bowl
Roasted Carrot and Ginger Soup
Prep Time
15 mins
Cook Time
1 hr
 
Course: Soup
Author: Gina
Ingredients
  • 1 kg carrots, peeled and diced into chunks
  • 1 onion, diced
  • garlic (Im not giving you an amount, you know how much garlic you want to add)
  • 2 tablespoons ginger, minced or fresh
  • olive oil
  • salt
  • black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable stock powder
  • 6 cups water
Instructions
  1. Heat your oven to 200°C

  2. In a bowl, toss the carrots with a bit of olive oil and salt & pepper to coat

  3. Spread the carrots on a lined baking tray and roast until soft, about 30 minutes

  4. Once carrots are ready, in your soup pot, fry the onion, garlic and ginger for a few minutes, until onion is soft

  5. Add the carrots to the pot

  6. Mix the stock powder with a cup of the water and add the water to the pot

  7. Add the rest of the water to the pot

  8. Bring to the boil and then simmer for approximately half an hour

  9. When you are ready to eat, blend the soup with a stick blender

Recipe Notes

You can add or decrease the amount of garlic and ginger to suit your taste.

I found that roasting the carrots made them quite sweet and that the kick of the ginger was good at balancing out the flavours.

This soup was also amazing the next day, the longer it simmers the longer the flavours have to take hold.

Soup weather

Winter, the season for soup.

So far I’ve made a pot of chicken soup and a pot of zucchini soup (requested by the boy child).

I wasnt sure about the zucchini soup. I like it roasted or as zucchini noodles but soup…?

So I searched the interwebs and found a few recipes but none really appealed to me. What did appeal to me were the recipes that had garlic in them.

So armed with a list of various recipes, a bag of zucchini, a garlic bulb and my spice rack I created my own recipe.

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Zucchini Garlic Soup
A mild and creamy zucchini soup.
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Prep Time
15 min
Cook Time
1 hr
Total Time
1 hr 15 min
Prep Time
15 min
Cook Time
1 hr
Total Time
1 hr 15 min
Ingredients
  1. Oil for frying
  2. 4 large zucchini, peeled and sliced
  3. 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped (more or less per your taste)
  4. 1 red onion, diced (most recipes called for white onion, I only had red and it was perfect)
  5. 4 cups of water or vegetable stock
  6. Salt and pepper to taste
  7. Herbs, I used basil and rosemary
  8. Ginger powder
Instructions
  1. Soak your peeled and sliced zucchini is a bowl of salted water.
  2. While that is soaking, in a large, heavy bottomed pot, lightly fry your onion and garlic until the onion is soft and translucent.
  3. Drain your zucchini and add to the pot.
  4. Heat until the zucchini starts to soften.
  5. Add your water or stock and bring to the boil.
  6. Once boiling, lower to a simmer and add your salt, pepper, herbs and ginger to taste. If you are using water, add more, if you are using stock add less.
  7. Simmer, partially covered, for 45 minutes.
Notes
  1. Serve hot with slices of olive bread.
  2. This soup has a very subtle flavour. Next time I will probably add a bit of sweet chili powder for a bit of a kick.
A Bit of This A Bit of That https://gnatj.com/

#Zombieprompts Week 14

Share your best soup recipe.

We’ve just seen the end of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere (good riddance!) so no more soup for us. Although chicken soup is always welcome, even in 40°C weather.

chicken-doctor-people-soup-prescription

This winter I made a few ‘throw everything in the pot’ soups and they all actually turned out really well.

In my opinion there are a few basic steps that MUST happen in order for any soup to be good, regardless of the ingredients.

  • Onion. Diced finely and fried until golden. Every soup should start with this as a base.
  • Herbs. Dried or fresh or frozen. You can use whatever you have on hand and don’t be shy, the more the merrier.
  • Time. You cant rush a good soup. Cook your veggies on a lower heat for longer. If you can, make your soup the day before you need it. Soup always tastes better the next day.

So, here is a basic recipe. You can adapt it depending what veggies you have in your fridge.

'Throw Everything In The Pot' Soup
A thick, smooth soup, perfect with fresh bread. The recipe below includes veggies I happen to have in my fridge at the time of writing this.
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Ingredients
  1. 2 tablespoons olive oil (I use 2 'ice cubes' with chopped herbs from my freezer, very Pinterersty of me)
  2. 1 large onion, diced
  3. Herbs such as rosemary, thyme, cilantro, mixed Italian herbs, basically whatever you have on hand
  4. Garlic, either fresh, chopped or garlic powder
  5. Salt & pepper to taste
The following veggies are not set, use all or some or add what you have
  1. Potatoes, peeled and cubed
  2. Sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
  3. Carrots, peeled and chopped into chunks
  4. Turnips, peeled and cubed
  5. Leeks, leaves chopped off, cut into 1 cm thick slices
  6. Celery, leaves chopped off, cut into 1 cm thick slices
  7. Water to cover chopped veggies
Instructions
  1. Once you have washed, peeled, diced and chopped all the veggies, add your olive oil and onion to a large pot and saute until golden.
  2. Add remaining veggies to the pot and sprinkle with the herbs, salt and pepper.
  3. Stir the veggies until they are all coated in the oil and spices.
  4. Keep stirring the veggies every 5 minutes or so until they are all heated through and starting to soften.
  5. Add enough water to the pot so that all the veggies are covered. I usually add about 1 cm above the veggie line.
  6. Turn down your heat to a simmer, cover the pot, leaving a small gap to allow steam to escape and simmer for an hour or longer until veggies are soft and falling apart when poked with a fork.
  7. Remove soup from heat and allow to cool slightly.
  8. You can leave the soup at this point and have a chunky broth or you can blend the veggies with a stick blender which is what I do.
  9. Reheat the soup when you are ready to eat.
Notes
  1. You can really add any veggies you want to this soup, peppers, squash, pumpkin, you name it you can add it.
A Bit of This A Bit of That https://gnatj.com/

The French know what they are doing.

Part of my last organic veggie order from Maggie’s Garden was about 15 small brown onions. I immediately thought of making a French onion soup.

Part of what intrigued me about this soup is that it is traditionally served with a piece of toasted crusty bread with cheese melted on top. Ummmm, sourdough bread anyone?

image

Yiddisha French Onion Soup
Serves 4
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Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
25 min
Total Time
35 min
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
25 min
Total Time
35 min
Ingredients
  1. 1 tablespoon oil
  2. 2 tablespoons butter (margarine if you want it to be parve)
  3. 2 cups thinly sliced onions
  4. Salt & pepper to taste
  5. 1 teaspoon thyme (I used oregano since that's what I had)
  6. 1 bay leaf
  7. 1/2 cup dry sherry ( this is where the yiddisha comes in, I used sweet kiddish wine)
  8. 6 cups beef stock (a parve beef stock cube in boiling water if you keep kosher)
  9. Thick slices of crusty bread (hello sourdough!)
  10. Lots of sliced or grated Gruyere or Swiss cheese (here in Israel I used sliced Emek cheese)
Instructions
  1. In a heavy bottomed pot, melt the oil and butter and add the onions.
  2. Season with the salt, pepper and herbs and cook for about 15 minutes storing often.
  3. When the onions have caramalised, add the bay leaf and the sherry/kiddish wine and stir.
  4. Add the stock and bring the soup to a boil.
  5. In the mean time, heat the grill in your oven.
  6. Place the bread slices on a baking sheet and top with slices of cheese.
  7. Place under the grill until the cheese is melted an bubbling.
  8. Dish up the soup into bowls and either float a slice of cheesy bread on top or serve the bread on the side.
Adapted from Rachael Ray via foodnetwork.com
A Bit of This A Bit of That https://gnatj.com/

Carrot and red onion soup

We landed up with two bags of carrots, way to much to eat before they went off, so I decided to make a carrot soup.

Ingredients

  • Carrots, peeled and chopped into medium chunks
  • Red onion, peeled and chopped into chunks (I used two small onions)
  • Stock powder (I used chicken stock powder, you can use vegetable stock or maybe even mushroom soup powder)
  • Oil for frying
  • Water
  • Walnuts, toasted (I used about half a cup.  Also walnuts in their shells are far cheaper than ones already shelled, also its fun to use a heavy bottomed pan and go all HULK SMASH on them, although its quite messy)

Method

  • Add carrots, onions and a tablespoon or two of dry stock powder to a large pot.

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  • Drizzle with a bit of oil and lightly fry the veggies until the stock powder is dissolved.
  • While frying, bring a kettle of water to the boil.
  • Cover veggies with water, just above the veggies should be enough.

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  • Bring the water and veggies to a boil and then cover and turn down the heat to simmer.
  • Simmer until carrots are soft.
  • While the veggies are simmering, toast some walnuts.
  • Once the carrots are soft, add half the toasted walnuts.
  • Blitz the veggies for a smooth, thick soup. (Its ok if its not completely smooth, it still tastes delicious!)

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  • Roughly chop the remaining walnuts and add to the top of the soup as a garnish.

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  • Enjoy!

Ginger, honey and carrot soup

My darling friend Roro in Israel made this delicious soup today for lunch.  Since its so cold over there she served it hot but I think it would make a yummy cold soup served with toasted French bread slices for summer too.

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Recipe as is, from Ro.

Ingredients

  • 1 Onion chopped up (I use red)
  • 5 Carrots peeled and sliced into rounds
  • Root of fresh ginger (or as much as you would like)
  • 4 Spoons honey
  • Orange juice of 1 orange (I just cut up the orange and add it in)
  • Lemon rind
  • 1 litre water
  • Salt and Pepper

Method

  • Fry onions in butter/olive oil until golden brown
  • Add ginger and carrots and cook for five minutes
  • Add honey, juice and lemon rinds
  • Add water and salt and pepper and cook until carrots are tender.
  • Take off heat and blend

Roasted Tomato Soup

Today we have another guest chef, Tanya (aka @Beagle_Momma) sent me a delicious and healthy recipe for roasted tomato soup.

Ingredients:

  • 900g baby tomatoes
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 20ml (weigh less) olive oil
  • 900ml chicken stock (I used oxtail – didn’t have anything else)
  • 20g Fresh chopped basil (i didn’t have, so just used about a tablespoon of dry italian herbs)
  • 5ml (weigh less) balsamic vinegar
  • Salt & pepper

Method:

  • Cut tomatoes in half, place on baking tray cut side up.
  • Also pop the 4 cloves of garlic on the tray
  • Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper
  • *Since I wasn’t using fresh basil, I sprinkled my dry herbs on too – fresh basil comes later tho*
  • Roast at 195degrees for an hour.
  • In the mean time, i prepared my 900ml of stock, and added balsamic vinegar to the stock.
  • Once the tomatoes & garlic are roasted (divine smell!!) take them out, pop the stock mixture, the roasted tomatoes/garlic into a blender *now would be when you add the fresh basil if you using it*
  • Blend until smooth.
  • Sprinkle with a little bit of feta before serving! A slice of crusty bread would be perfect too!

Serves 4 and each portion counts as 2 Veg and 1 Fat.

The recipe says serve hot or cold!

Easy, healthy, tasty, quick! Winner!