Carrot & Coriander Soup

I, like many other brides-to-be have put myself on a strict diet - if there's one day a girl can be the belle of the ball, it is on her wedding day!  I, like many other women, struggle with my weight.  Having transitioned from a carefree young woman who could eat as much as she liked, go to the gym as little as she liked, and still be a size 8/10, to a more curvaceous woman in my late 20's, it took it’s toll on my self-esteem.

I am now taking charge.  Exercising on it's own is simply not enough.
One's diet is fundamental to healthy weight loss.

Winter is a tough time to watch the calories and fat intake.  When it’s cold, grey, damp and miserable, I, a self-confessed ‘foodie floozy’, usually sought solace in the usual winter comforts, Sunday roasts with the works, pasta dishes, baked potatoes, stews with mash, toad in the hole, sausages, fondue, bread…..(oh how I miss bread….).

One of the things I've taken to doing is making large vats of varying vegetable soups.  I can easily make a soup one morning, leave it on the hob, and heat it up and have it for a few days.  Please note, that soups, like many other things, only get better with age.

Here is the carrot and coriander soup that I made the other day......(needless to say I did not eat the bread that you spy in the picture......but I might have had a riot on my hands if I'd attempted to give Alex a bowl of soup on it's own!).  This was pretty cheap to make as I already had the stock cubes and herbs in the store cupboard, and the carrots, onions, and fresh herbs cost under £5!

Here's what I used:

1 kg carrots - peeled, topped and tailed, roughly chopped into similar sizes

2 onions - finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic - finely chopped

2 bay leaves

1 litre of vegetable stock

good seasoning with salt & white pepper

fresh coriander

3 tsp dried coriander

Heat the onions and garlic gently in olive oil over a gentle to medium heat.  Do not brown.  We want to bring out the natural sugars in the onion and garlic, and we can only achieve this with slow cooking. 

Once this looks translucent and is verging on the caramelised stage, add the carrots.  Cook the carrots a little with the onions and garlic, this will encourage some of the carrots natural sugars to be released also.

Add the dried coriander.  I always find that cooking spices helps to bring out depth of the flavour, as opposed to sprinkling them when the stock has been added.

Add the vegetable stock.

Add the bay leaves.

Bring to the boil. 

Transfer the pot to smallest ring on your hob, and turn the heat right down and simmer gently for around an hour.

(I actually went to the gym, and came back, and it was perfectly fine).

Take the soup off the heat. 

Now this is important, let the soup cool a little, before blending with a hand held blender stick.

I once made the mistake of trying to blend soup when it was still scalding hot.  I looked at my BlackBerry for what must have been no more than a millisecond, and before I knew it, molten hot butternut squash soup sprayed all over a beautiful silk Alberta Ferretti blouse, and of course every conceivable surface within a metre radius!  Lesson learned.

Yes, accidents happen, but darlings for the purposes of damage limitation, let's not burn ourselves, or damage clothes as well....!

Now is the time to check for seasoning.  Remember you can always add, but you can never take away, (how ironic - I really should have thought of that when consuming all those Singapore noodles over the last 29 years). 

Carrots and onions are sweet, and for me, soup should be savoury.  I like the hum of spicy white pepper, and I think it compliments the gentle heat of the coriander; however, you should just season to your liking.  You could also add a few chilli flakes if that takes your fancy.

Serve this hearty, winter warming soup, with a dollop of 0% fat Greek yoghurt and a sprinkling of fresh coriander and parsley.....oh and some warm, crusty French bread for those who are not yet at war with carbs.

Give yourself a big pat on the back....xoxo....