Cilantro Carrot Soup

One of my new found favorite soups is Carrot Coriander. I discovered it when I bought one of those box soups by Knorr. They were on sale at Loblaws for $1.99. One box of soup is 2 portions, but if I don't have enough leftovers to bring as lunch, then I just grab a soup and some crackers. It's cheaper and healthier than buying my lunch at the food court.


For x'mas, Rachelle got me a gift card to Indigo bookstore. I've been wanting to buy a cookbook, but never knew which one to buy...there are just so many. So when I went to buy one, Rachelle pointed out a couple of them to me. The one that I finally decided on was "Just 5 Things: Gourmet Cooking with Just a Handful of Ingredients" by Rachel Lane. The cookbook has beautiful pictures, which I love. I consider the book to have great base recipes that I could modify to my liking. I spend days flipping through the cookbook and fell upon a coriander carrot soup recipe that uses only 5 ingredients. I went online and looked for several carrot soup recipes. I finally modified it like this:





6 large carrots, peeled and sliced
4 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup chopped onions
2 cups 2% milk or cream
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 pinch cayenne
1 Tbs cilantro (coriander)
1 potato, cubed
1 garlic bulb, minced

1. Boil the carrots and potato in the water until tender. Drain and puree in a food processor.


2. In a large pot, cook the onion and garlic in a ladle-full of broth, until tender and translucent. Add the vegetable broth, milk and carrot/potato puree. Simmer for 3 minutes. Stir in the seasonings (salt, pepper, cayenne, and cilantro). Simmer for 5 minutes longer.

The soup was yummy, but I was a little heavy with the cayenne pepper. I also used an extra teaspoon of cilantro. I bought those frozen cilantro cubes at the store. They are quite good and it's more convenient. I also didn't want to use my blender to puree the potato and carrots, because I was too lazy to wash it. I mashed the veggies with my masher, but the soup ended up being too chunky. So I used a mesh spoon to fish out as much veggie as i could and pureed most of it. Much better. Next time, i'll puree it as instructed in step 1.