Today, Sunday, was the wettest, horribilest, I’m emigrating Sunday we might ever have known. You could hear the wind and rain pelting the window from the comfort of the early morning bed.
Strangely, the weather didn’t depress me. I found it funny. It was so ridiculous, so ‘is this really happening?’ that you could only laugh at the November day outside. It’s July by the way.
So, it was a day for soup. A day for staying in the jammies, playing with the baby, not cooking dinner, and making soup.
I spotted a large bag of carrots in the fridge yesterday. They were faring better than the last bag of carrots whose melted remains were slurped from the salad box with a large wad of kitchen roll. We’re not big carrot eaters in this house.
One good use for a bunch of carrots is Carrot, Coriander and Orange soup. I found the recipe for this back in the day when I was a fan of the juicing diet. I read a book by Jason Vale called 7lbs in 7 days. It promised… well that you’d lose seven pounds in seven days. I lasted five days. And I lost five pounds.
Not eating and replacing meals with green juice is the worldly equivalent of hell on earth. No good can come of it, except an acid stomach, a depleted fruit and veg stock from the back of your fridge and an absolute delight that you are enduring torture. A bit like completing a 10k run.
The soup however remains with me. And it’s absolutely gorgeous. No lie.
Ingredients
- Bunch of carrots (about six or so, big ones!)
- Handful of fresh coriander (ground will do if you don’t have the green stuff, but the flavour’s much fresher with the real herb)
- One orange, peeled and sliced into chunks
- One onion
- 1000ml of chicken stock
- Black pepper
- Yoghurt to garnish
Method
Chop the carrots and onion and sweat in some butter (or low fat cooking spray if you’re dieting, like me). After five minutes add the stock, fresh coriander, orange and black pepper. Boil until carrots are soft – this should take about 30 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before blending together in electric blender. For this soup I prefer the jug blender rather than hand blender. Serve garnished with pepper, coriander and yoghurt.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Can’t Cook, Will Cook authentic experience if I didn’t tell you the things that went wrong. They were:
1) At 30 minutes the carrots were still rock hard because I’d changed to too low of heat.
2) I then switched to a high heat and when I came back 15 minutes later, almost all the water had boiled off and I was left with carrot and orange mash. Mmmm
3) I fixed it, by adding cold water to the blender. The result- we only had one bowl of soup each, cos LadyNicci had boiled the rest away. But, what a bowl of soup it was.
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Oh delicious. I’m defo making a batch of this to freeze for post hospital.
Oh do Kelly, would b lovely with loads of buttery brown bread! It’s really yummy, and unusual as you’d never use an orange in cooking really. Ah, recovery food!
can you taste the orange? Fruit in anything puts me off but that looks super tasty.
I’m one of those “no fruit on a dinner” types. Fruit should not be in a curry. Or on a pizza
*vomits*
Yes you can can, but I put a while orange in. You could use add a squirt of orange juice. Need it for the slight tanginess I think. I always pick pineapple off pizzas!
Have made carrot and coriander soup successfully in the past but, annoyingly, have misplaced recipes. Soup I made last night is still edible but “Coriander Soup” would be a better name for it!