Lightly Spiced Carrot Soup – Liquid sunshine!

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The choice at my supermarket the other day was an odd one. I could have a 1kg bag of carrots (already half a kilo more than I actually wanted) ... or I could have a 3kg sack at one-third of the price of the smaller bag?  Why can’t they do that kind of maths with chocolate?

It was a no-brainer but what on earth to do with the 2.5kg of carrots left over.

They’ve been cut into sticks and used to transport Hummus and Melitzanosalata (Roasted Aubergine Dip) to my mouth.

They’ve been made into veggie samosas.

They’ve been shredded into a carrot and orange salad.

They’ve been roasted along with a Piri Piri / Peri Peri / Pili Pili chicken.

They’ve been made into Spiced Carrot and Walnut Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting.

Oddly enough, I’m not sick of carrots yet but boy is my eyesight super sharp this week and I swear my ears are longer and kinda floppy. I’ve used up the last of the carrots in this lightly spiced carrot soup – a bowl of liquid sunshine and a lovely light meal for the dog days of summer.

For 4 – 6 servings of 'sunny as a bowl of sunshine' carrot soup you will need...

1 teaspoon coriander seed

½ teaspoon cumin seed

3 green cardamom pods

2 tablespoons of olive oil or butter

1 stick of celery, peeled of stringy bits and roughly chopped

2 medium onions, roughly chopped

750g carrots, skinned and sliced or diced

1 litre of chicken stock (or vegetable stock to keep it vegetarian)

½ teaspoon fine table salt*

¼ teaspoon ground white pepper

Transfer the toasted spices to a bowl (or mortar, as in the photo)

First, toast the coriander seed, cumin seed and cardamom by placing them in a dry frying pan over a medium heat, swirling them around the pan to toast them evenly and to keep them from burning. This will only take a couple of minutes so don’t leave them unattended. They are done when the colour deepens slightly and they begin to smell toasty and spicy. Take them off the heat and transfer them to a bowl (or mortar) to prevent them from cooking further. Remove the cardamom seeds from their pods, discarding the pods.

When they have cooled, crush all three spices to a coarse powder using a pestle and mortar or a spice grinder if you have one, or you could put them on a chopping board and roll over them with a rolling pin.

Next, heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Add the celery, onions and carrots and stir to coat with the oil. Turn down the heat to the gentlest of sizzles and cover the pan with a lid. Let the vegetables ‘sweat’ gently for about 10 minutes. You are not looking to brown them.

Add the toasted, crushed spices, stock and salt and pepper to the saucepan. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until the carrots are soft. Remove from the heat and puree to a smooth cream (a stick blender is ideal for this job).

Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

The well-mannered, posed picture...

I served it with a swirl of crème fraîche and a handful of fresh coriander leaf but parsley, basil or chives are also good.

Moments later - have I mentioned my coriander addiction...

(tho' basil, chives, parsley or chervil are all equally good with this soup)

* If your stock is already quite salty, hold off on adding any salt until you’ve tasted the pureed soup as it may not need it.

Schlurp! That's all folks!

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Orange, Cardamom & Coriander Madeleines – It's not what you've got, it's how you use it!

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For Café Europe - a cultural initiative held as part of Austria’s EU presidency in 2006 - Ireland offered scones, and France offered the Madeleine. While very different products, scones and Madeleines have some things in common – flour, sugar, butter, and social ambition. While both had relatively humble beginnings, they were adopted by high society – the scone becoming an essential part of ‘Afternoon Tea’, made fashionable by a rather peckish Anna Duchess of Bedford in the mid-nineteenth Century. The Madeleine (according to one account) was already a favourite at Versailles, adopted by the Court of Louis XV a century earlier. Both got a little lift from the invention of baking powder. There the similarity ends. Perhaps it's a lesson in "It's not what you've got, it's how you use it!"

In Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust’s narrator famously has a foodgasm brought on by the Madeleine. He doesn’t mention scones.

For 24 foodgasm-inducing Madeleines you will need…

… 2 x 12-hole Madeleine tins (you’ll get away with 1, just let it cool between bakes)

150g butter

3 eggs

130g caster sugar

a teaspoon of finely grated orange zest

1 teaspoon coriander seed, finely ground

the seeds from 2 fat green cardamom pods, finely ground

¼ tsp salt

130g plain flour

¾ tsp baking powder

a little extra flour for dusting the cake tins

Icing sugar for dusting over the finished cakes

Method

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over a medium to high heat (use a light-coloured saucepan such as stainless steel if possible as it allows you to see the colour change in the butter that indicates it has reached the right point). Once melted, let it continue to foam and splutter, swirling occasionally to make sure it is heating evenly. As the foaming and spluttering dies down, the butter will continue to darken from yellow, to golden, to toasty brown. The butter will also begin to smell a little nutty. The milk solids in the butter will separate out and sink to the bottom. Remove the pan from the hob and pour into a heatproof bowl or jug to cool to room temperature, leaving as much of the milk solid residue behind as possible (If you leave the melted butter in the pan, it will continue to cook in the residual heat and may burn).

Remove 2 tablespoons of the melted butter right away – you’ll need this to brush the cake tins later – cover and keep it at room temperature so that it remains liquid.

Put the eggs in a large bowl and add the sugar. Whisk until pale, pale yellow and has thickened to the ‘ribbon’ stage – the whisk will leave a trail as you move it through the mixture and when you lift the whisk, the batter will fall in a ribbon and stay on the surface for a couple of moments before slowly disappearing back into the mixture.

From top left to right, you can see the colour change as you whisk the batter

Add the salt, orange zest and ground spices.  Trickle in the cooled butter, whisking all the while until incorporated into the batter.

Add the baking powder to the flour and sift about one-third onto the surface of the batter. Using a metal spoon such as a dessertspoon, gently fold the flour into the batter. Repeat twice more until you have folded all the flour into the mixture.

Cover with cling film, pressing down lightly so that it is in contact with the surface of the batter.

Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour or overnight if possible.

When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Brush the Madeleine tins lightly with the reserved melted butter and sprinkle lightly with flour, tapping off the excess. Divide the batter evenly between the tins filling no more than about three-quarters full (an ice cream scoop or piping bag is good for even portioning). Don’t bother to spread the batter out to the edges - gravity will do the work for you.

Don't bother spreading the batter to the edges - gravity will do the work for you!

Transfer to the pre-heated oven and bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until risen and golden and spring back under the touch of a finger. If the God of Madeleines has been kind, they should have formed a ‘dromedary’ hump (which I always thought was a defect, but turns out to be Madeleine perfection – who knew!). 

A ‘dromedary hump’ is desirable...

Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for a minute or so before tipping gently out of their shells onto a wire rack to cool. They freeze marvelously and are restored to oven-fresh magnificence after about 12 seconds in the microwave. If you are going to freeze them do so now, without their sugar dusting.

If they are to be eaten now, once cool, dust with icing sugar and consume with a decent cup of tea or a glass of sticky dessert wine.

You could also dip them in good dark chocolate or white chocolate.

A bit of quality control… baker's privilege ...

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Carrot, Coconut & Cardamom Soup... conspiring to comfort !

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I am studiously avoiding the bathroom scales because I know that after a Christmas of feasting it will more than likely say: “Gerroff, ya great lump!”

I got brilliant advice from a friend on how to lose weight instantly: “Turn the scales back 5kg on the 1st of January!” Unfortunately my bathroom scales are digital and they refuse to tell even the whitest of white lies. L If I’m to swap the slightly cuddlier post-Christmas me for a healthier lower-fat me ‘lite’, then it will be down to diet and exercise.

Luckily, with the turn of the year (and following multiple overdoses of chocolate truffles, mince pies, Christmas cake ...) I am craving healthy stuff – winter salads, green vegetables al dente, and soup, lots of lovely warming soup.

Today it is bitterly cold so I’m thinking... the sweetness of carrots, I’m thinking ... the warmth of cardamom ... the fresh zing of orange zest. So far, so good (tasty and reasonably healthy). However... I can’t quite leave behind the craving for richness against the harshness of winter, so I’m thinking a great big comforting swirl of nutty, creamy coconut milk.

The response from my coconut-detesting taste-tester?  “Oh ! That’s good !”

Healthy stuff...

 

For 6 - 8 portions of sunny soup that will surprise even a coconut-hater you will need...

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive (or 15g butter)

3 pods of cardamom, seeds only, crushed

½ teaspoon finely grated orange zest (orange part only)

500g carrots, (prepared weight), peeled and sliced

1 onion, finely chopped

1 small clove of garlic, crushed

750ml good quality chicken stock

1 x 400ml tin of unsweetened coconut milk

Salt and white pepper to taste 

Finely chopped coriander leaf or parsley to serve, and some crusty white bread or a delicious nutty wholemeal bread won't hurt

 

Method

Place the olive oil (or butter) into a medium saucepan over a medium heat and add the crushed cardamom seed. Fry gently for about a minute before adding the orange zest, carrots, onion and garlic. Stir to coat in the oil (or butter), then turn down the heat to low.

Cover and cook gently without colouring for about 15 minutes, stiring every few minutes (if the vegetables appear to be sticking, add a little more oil or butter and make sure the heat is low enough – if the vegetables are sizzling, the heat is too high).

Next, add the chicken stock and unsweetened coconut milk. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, and leave to cook gently for a further 15 minutes.

Finally, puree the soup – a stick blender is the perfect tool for this job. Taste and add salt and a little white pepper if necessary.

Serve with a sprinkling of finely chopped parsley or corriander leaf, or get posh and instead serve with parsley or corriander leaf oil artfully dotted on top.

Tuck in!

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