Thai Ginger Carrot soup

This soup was a recipe that I made and sold when we had our little cafe here in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.  It was very cost-efficient, I could always find the ingredients, and it froze beautifully.  While I love a brothy soup, I also love how thick this is, without being full of heavy cream.  And never mind that colour!

I find a lot of recipes online that I have to adjust because I cannot find all the ingredients for them here.  Or, if I can, I don’t feel like searching for them only to find them today and not tomorrow.  Even when ingredients seem that they’ll always be there, sometimes they’re not.  For example, this week I couldn’t find icing sugar anywhere.  Icing sugar? Really?  Argh.  It’s like there was an icing sugar convention and every bag in town was bought for desserts and displays.

That’s not what cooking is about to me.  I want it to be delicious, beautiful, different, but I just don’t have the time to spend hours going from store to store, wondering why they had an ingredient last week, but not this.  I would love to spend hours scouring farmers markets, trying all those beautiful options out there, but they don’t exist here.   So, I make the best of what I have, literally.

While I don’t need to be warmed up here very often in the Caribbean, you might need to be, and this soup with do the trick without all those extra calories.  Double it, freeze the leftovers, and warm it up again when you get home late because of a snowy day.

It will warm you and brighten your table.

 

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 TAB sesame oil
• 1 sweet onion, chopped (I use the Mexican white onion here, but a vidalia would be lovely)
• 4 garlic cloves, diced
• 3 inch ginger root, diced
• 2 lbs carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1 thai chili pepper, chopped (I use whatever chili pepper I can find)
• 5 cups vegetable broth
• 1 can coconut milk

DIRECTIONS:

Heat sesame oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.  Add onion, garlic, ginger, carrots, and pepper.   Cook, stirring frequently until hot and fragrant, about five minutes.  Add stock.  Simmer, covered, until carrots are tender, about 20 minutes.

Let cool a little before pureeing in a blender, or use an immersion blender if you have one.  Add coconut milk, puree again.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.