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Recipe: Something For The Cooler Season – Carrot-Ginger Soup

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It’s monsoon time here in India, at least where I live in the South. This is the season when something to warm your heart and soul is needed. Many people reach for fried goodies at this time, and watching the rain with a hot cup of tea and some pakoda is a classic activity. As much as I love doing something similar, and I know it has its place, it’s soup that really does the trick for me. There’s nothing that a bowl of soup can’t fix, and fixing a bowl of soup is a pleasure in itself. This carrot-ginger soup is a lovely one, richly flavourful and so soothing.

Honestly, while the rains are ideal soup-consuming weather, I do think soups work all year round. Their lightness is so suitable for summer, when heavy meals are harder to digest. Their warmth provides comfort in winters and monsoons. At any time of day or year, they make for a great appetizer, or even a meal in a bowl. They relax and they heal. And they just taste so good.

I’m the kind of person who likes to cook dishes on a loop. When something is really satisfying, I make it on repeat for the next few weeks or even a month or two, until my family and I grow tired of it and move on to the next food item that catches our fancy. That’s precisely what’s been happening with this carrot-ginger soup right now.

We especially love the spicy kick that the ginger provides, and now that everyone in the home is an adult, there is no more fuss about carrots or vegetables in general. In fact, it has been a real pleasure to see my older son in particular grow into a person who cares deeply about cooking. The foundation of my own cooking comes from my mother, who was a great innovator in the kitchen. I am the same, and so is my son. It is delightful to see this legacy continue, and as a parent it is just so wonderful to see one’s child challenging their mind and experimenting. I can imagine that he does this in the world of business, and brings that sensibility home to his food too. It’s such a fulfilling feeling, and gives me a sense that I have done something right with my life.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I will be winding down this blog next month, and I am doing so with a full heart. I know that my culinary gifts have been shared, with my own children, and with every well-wisher who has spent time here – like you.

Coming back to this soup for the soul: in India we tend to get basic orange carrots, not heritage ones, and very rarely do we find the other kinds on the market. Those may yield a more exciting colour to the soup, and I haven’t tried to replicate the same artificially either with a synthetic ingredient or when it comes to the editing of my photos. I prefer not to do either, in general.

What I do enjoy doing, as mentioned earlier, is playing around with ingredients in the kitchen. It’s a hit or miss situation, but when you land on something that works, you truly make that recipe your own.

With this soup, for instance, you can easily swap out the carrots for pumpkin or sweet potato, each of which has its own flavours. Or go further, and try it with moringa or another vegetable altogether. I tend to add a variety of chopped vegetables to any kind of soup I make, so as to boost its nutritional value. Adding finely cut tofu quickly elevates such a dish to a meal in a bowl, too. You can make this meal even more filling by adding a protein of your choice on the side. If you’re a meat eater, using bone broth will take the protein quotient to another level. Play around with garnishing: why not substitute freshly chopped coriander with sautéed curry leaves, which add a fantastic flavour? Let this recipe be a starting point for a soup that truly satisfies not just your tastebuds but your creativity too!

Carrot-Ginger Soup
(Yield: 3-4 cups)

2 medium-sized carrots (chopped)
1 tablespoon ginger (grated)
½ cup onion (chopped)
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2-3 garlic cloves (chopped)
Salt to taste
¼ teaspoon pepper
A pinch of cumin powder
A pinch of turmeric powder
2 tablespoons masoor dal (boiled)
¼ teaspoon chili flakes
1 cube vegetable stock
2-3 cups hot water
½ cup coconut milk
Chopped coriander leaves for garnishing

Heat a large pot over medium heat. Add the coconut oil. Add the chopped onions and garlic and stir until the onions are transparent. Now, add the carrots.

Melt the vegetable stock cube by adding 1 cup hot water to it.

Add this stock to the carrots. Season with salt, turmeric and pepper. Cover with a lid and allow to cook until tender.

Now, add the ginger and the masoor dal.

Allow the mixture to boil, then lower the flame. Simmer for between 10-20 minutes. Then, turn off the gas. Allow to cool, then blend the mixture.

Pour the soup back into the pot. Add coconut milk. Mix well. Do not allow to boil once the coconut milk is added.

Garnish and serve hot.

I have shared many more soup recipes over the years, and I hope you’ll enjoy exploring them all!

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Recipes

Recipe: Irresistible Carrot-Ginger Cake

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This is something I’ve never done before – sharing the recipe for a dish I’ve recently added to the re:store menu – but this cake is so divine that I can’t help but want to shout about it from the rooftops! Despite my interest in healthy eating, I’ve never really been one for vegetable-based cakes. But this carrot-ginger cake is simply outstanding. From the moment I took my first attempt out of the oven, I was stunned. And every slice since has simply vanished in a matter of hours in my home, and from the re:store kitchen. And for all the love you, my well-wishers and friends, have shown me, this recipe is just a small gesture of gratitude.

I am always on a quest for perfection, and to me there are four types of cakes that every baker should master: chocolate, vanilla, vegan and carrot. These are the basics, and over the years I have strived to do better and better with each kind. Flavour-wise, there are many ways to innovate on these basics and tweak them to suit your palate. My friends Michael and Sujata’s cook once shared a carrot cake recipe which used pineapple and coconut, for instance. That was what I used to bake until I found my own way of literally spicing it up. When I melded the zesty taste of ginger into what I’d use to think of as the somewhat boring carrot cake, I knew I had hit gold.

Ginger is the rhizome of a flowering plant by the same name, and is widely used in Indian cuisine for its fragrance, spiciness and health benefits. It was one of the first spices that Europeans imported, so world cuisines have also used it for centuries. It is great for treating nausea and appetite loss, has anti-inflammatory properties, and is believed to lower blood sugar and to help reduce the risk of heart disease.  For this cake, I used stem ginger soaked in sugar syrup as well as freshly grated ginger.

Carrot, like ginger, is also an edible root – and it is an extremely popular vegetable in Western cuisine. In India, it is added to salads, stir-fries (known as poriyal in Tamil) and even a milk dessert called gajar ki halwa. It also has a range of health benefits, including better eyesight and lowered cholesterol, and is a source of potassium, antioxidants, vitamins and fibre.

Two nourishing ingredients – and one delicious dessert. This cake is so appetizing that icing is completely optional! Also, it is lactose-free, which means that those of you with dairy allergies can indulge without stress!

Irresistible Carrot-Ginger Cake

Ingredients
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup plain flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ cups grated carrots
½ cup sweet ginger in syrup (substitute: ½ teaspoon dry ginger powder)
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Grease an 8’ inch square pan and line with butter paper. Dust with flour.

Sift the flour along with the soda, baking powder and salt – as well as the ginger powder if you’ve opted to use it. Set aside.

Combine the eggs, oil, sugar and flour until well-mixed. Now add the carrots, fresh ginger and walnuts to the mixture.

Pour this batter into the prepared tin. Bake for about 45 minutes to an hour, until the tooth pick comes out clean.

Once baked, allow to cool. Turn onto a wire rack.

As I said earlier, icing is completely optional. But if you’d like the extra sweetness, or just the visual effect, decorate with the cream cheese frosting that is traditionally paired with carrot cakes. It has a slight tang to it, and lifts the flavours nicely.

Serve – and prepare to watch the slices simply vanish from their plates. This carrot-ginger cake is irresistible. Don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself, or if you’re in Chennai, buzz me and put in your order!

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