It's Friday So It Must Be Soup! Jan 7 /11

Sometimes the only thing that dictates my soup choices are the foods that are going to rot in my fridge if I don't use them up and although that doesn't sound very appealing on paper,  I don't think that it is unique. I rarely plan out a soup and then go and shop for all of the ingredients and that is what happened this week. Soup is THE perfect way to throw whatever you have lying around in a pot with some stock - leftover roasted veggies, fresh veggies, it's all good. Because I had bought a huge bag of carrots to make last week's turkey scotch broth  and we don't eat a ton of carrots as an actual vegetable, I wanted to make sure I used them up. I poked through a few cookbooks and checked online and found this recipe at Taste Space on tastespotting and it was pretty close to what I was looking for. I didn't want anything gingery or overly sweet, which carrot soups can often be. This Moroccan carrot soup was going to be my Friday soup, with just a couple of tweaks and changes:

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Moroccan Carrot Soup

2 tablespoons or less of butter or oil
1 cup chopped white onion
1 pound large carrots, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 2 2/3 cups)
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth (I used 3 cups of chicken stock)
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds (I used ground cumin without any roasting)
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (I used 2 tsp)
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

(I threw in 1/4 cup of well rinsed quinoa to give the soup some protein as it would be our main course)

1/2 cup plain yogurt, stirred to loosen

1. Melt butter in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté 2 minutes. Mix in carrots. (I added the toasted, ground cumin seed and allspice to the onion mixture before I added the carrots and sautéed them all together for a minute until it was really fragrant. THEN I added the carrots and the quinoa)

Add broth; bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until carrots are very tender, about 20 minutes (longer if you want them really tender to make a creamy soup). (because of the quinoa, I let it simmer for about 45 minutes)

2. Stir cumin seeds in small skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant, 4 to 5 minutes; cool. Finely grind in spice mill. (I skipped this step but I am sure it would be wonderful) ( I did this prior to starting the soup and added the toasted, ground spices in with the onions)

3. Remove soup from heat. (at this point I tasted the soup and it needed more cumin to my taste so I added a tsp of ground cumin) Puree in batches in blender until smooth. Return to same pan. Whisk in honey, lemon juice, and allspice. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Ladle soup into bowls. Drizzle yogurt over; sprinkle generously with cumin.

Serves 4.

You know, the quinoa is almost impossible to taste although you can see the tell tale little rings in the soup but it's such a great way of adding a punch of protein without adding any real extra flavour or texture to something like a soup or a stew and I used it often. Although I like this soup well enough, I don't like it as much as the Morrocan lentil soup I  made a couple of months ago but Little Shack seemed to really like it, so I will probably make it again at some point. Not a bad soup at all, just not a better soup, you know?

Carrot