I feel like I spend just as much time talking about foods I don’t like on this blog, as I doabout what I love.  What can I say, I have issues with a bunch of things, and soup is one of them. About five years ago, I went through a prolonged soup bender. The problem was that I hated everything I made, and I still cringe when I think of my attempts at curried sweet potato soup, homemade chicken noodle soup, and some type of cabbage patch soup from the Crazy Plates cookbook.  It all comes down to texture: too thick and you feel like you’re eating baby food, too thin and it’s like soup flavoured water.

The only one I could ever get right was this carrot ginger soup, but because I ate so much of it, I have not cooked up a batch since 2006. It’s pretty straightforward and requires a little bit of chopping and sauté-ing, before you add some stock, and let it simmer away on the stove. If you have an immersion blender (which I do, as I broke my Mom’s last year after sticking it in a jar of almond butter), it’s even easier because you just puree the soup right in the pot. It’s finished off with some freshly squeezed orange juice, and away you go.

 

I brought this to Alexis & Nick last weekend when I went over to visit little Mila. Annie has a great post on meal ideas for new parents, but I mostly just used her information for inspiration. Alexis is a vegetarian, so that rules out most big batch items that first come to mind to bring to new parents (i.e. stews, chili, lasagna, although I realize there are vegetarian versions of all of those). I never forgot what Lydia told me after Ethan was born: food you can eat with one hand is ideal. She loved the muffins and scones I brought her, because she could just grab them for breakfast or snacks, as it’s too hard to make toast or eat cereal when holding the baby. With this in mind, I thought Alexis could heat up some soup in a mug and sip it while holding Mila. I also made some buttermilk cheddar biscuits to go along with the soup and some banana muffins which I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about before because I make them all the time. I’ll write about them both next.

Carrot Ginger Soup

Source: co-worker, who got it from the LCBO’s Food & Drink Magazine

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter

1 lb carrots, peeled and diced

1 large onion, diced

1 tbsp freshly grated ginger root

salt & freshly ground pepper

4 cups (1L) chicken or vegetable stock

1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (1 big orange)

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion and ginger, and cook for 10 minutes until the onions are softened. Season with salt and pepper.
  2. Add stock, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 40-60 minutes (I let mine go for about an hour), until the carrots are very soft. Remove from heat.
  3. Let soup cool slightly, then puree. Add orange juice, stir, and taste to check seasonings. Makes about 6 cups, and this recipe is easily doubled.